And for our politics? It needs to continually second-guess itself. More insulated leaderships should be more fearful: and doing this properly requires more than a website. (No, BJP, creating www.lkadvani.in does not make your leader automatically Obama-esque, regardless of how many of your press releases tell us it does.) We’ve heard a lot about how Rahul Gandhi’s handpicked candidates from the Youth Congress have done well this election; perhaps not because they’re young — never really a requirement in the Youth Congress — but because they were hand-picked. Somehow those naturally old, conservative institutions, our national parties, need to be projecting ideas of themselves that look tangibly ahead. It’s easy to attack Rahul Gandhi, for example, for not being a political natural or for not having the family charisma in sufficient quantity; but until everybody else seems to look ahead as much as he tries to, they’re going to be behind.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com