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Akhilesh, Rahul or Ambanis: Make your parents proud

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Bindu Dalmia
Bindu DalmiaOct 14, 2016 | 15:02

Akhilesh, Rahul or Ambanis: Make your parents proud

Dearest baba log,

Know that where you stand today is through the sweat of your fathers or mothers that bequeathed you the right of ascent.

Posthumously, all heirs inherit, as is the law of nature. But as is the nature of man, he will always keep his progeny on a leash, unless he's a saint.

The founding fathers of business or politics built that base for your take-off, to give you wings to soar.

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Fortunately, you never lived through scarcity, or struggles. You lived in a freer India than your parents did.

You neither saw black-and-white TVs, nor drove ugly ambassador cars of pre-lib India.

Cronyism

Founding fathers arose by evolving a business/political-model, a bit of sacrifice and some by dollops of cronyism, while others rose through corrupt practices.

Times have changed, so you cannot follow that template anymore. As shareholders to the prosperity and power of India, "the nation wants to know" what gives scions the right to perpetuate without deliverables. That's the short and sweet of it, to heirs.

Neither are all sons are not Aurangzebs in holding fathers in captivity, nor are all fathers paranoid like the emperor, when he admitted "the art of reigning is so delicate that the king's jealousy should be awakened by his very shadow".

While palace intrigues and bloodied succession was the route of passage for princes to become emperors during the Mughal empire, Lord Rama was by far the perfect son and king.

Now, real-life heirs seldom replicate the dharmic virtues of mythological heroes. Empirically, nothing divided man from man more than power, pelf or property, as battle lines on bifurcation and delegation of control to the next generation of business or political scions turns murky, sometimes even vicious.

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Akhilesh Yadav's rebuttal to his father - "We are taught to respect elders, but if things go far, I will crack the whip" - is perceived as assertive in the battle of the old versus new guard.

Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil divided after they inherited wealth from their father, who worked his way up from a "chaul".

Sonia Gandhi lived through widowhood for two decades to pass on a hard-earned and difficult to retain political baton to a Rahul, still to rise and shine. Akhilesh won his laurels four years back riding the cycle on his father's back.

rahul-gandhi_101416015857.jpg
Congress VP Rahul Gandhi. (Photo credit: PTI)

Both Rahul and Akhilesh, by now middle-aged and well into their 40s, were perceived as youth leaders young India would have yearned to iconise some years back had they adequately impacted the lives of aspirational Indians, as did their corporate-elder equivalent, Mukesh Ambani.

Blame Sonia, Lalu or Mulayam for being control-freaks? All fathers are victims of their times too. Their progenies had a first-mover advantage through birth, not by rising from bottom to up.

Young Indians looked for progress from within the first families in politics and business to pioneer change.

Instead, it was the start-ups in business, the Bansals of Flipkart; or the political startups of a Kejriwal's loved-and-hated AAP that pioneered the change.

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Legacy

It was a "legacy-less" Modi who turned young Indians into a selfie-crazy generation, Facebook and Twitter addicts. Modi thought fresh, thought young.

Mulayam Singh Yadav thought feudal, and built his political capital and creedology on socialism, but turned elitist with ostentatious Saifi soirees.

Sonia thought dynastic and imperial. Lalu's Lohiaisim aberrated into a business-model worked on the lines of the compounding gains of pilferage.

Dhirubhai thought futuristic as well, as he stood for shareholders' wealth too, that embodied the best example of self-growth plus delivery to the masses.

Had the local fiefs held the progress of those they governed as cherished goals, UP and Bihar would not remain mired in poverty, riots and jungle raj after years of MSY and Lalu's governance.

Political offsprings find it difficult to deviate and evolve a cult suited to modern day needs of governance, while the corporates adapt to disruptions much faster.

While the World Bank report on Ease of Doing Business places UP at No 1 in north India, the state will have the largest number of new voters, who don't connect with the old guard by the 2017 Assembly elections.

The CM's developmental thrust on infrastructure is inadequate to define him as evolutionary, as he could do little on corruption, the mining mafia, riots or reign in bureaucrats, being labelled "one-fourth of a CM", the other three being his father and corrupt uncles.

The ageing MSY needs his son's change-maker image electorally as the credible younger face of the party for votes, as much as Akhilesh needs the grassroots support from his corrupt family elders.

With UP having seen three Mulayam regimes, the freshness of appeal in a younger face who is trying to rid the SP from shackles of the old-regime, spells continuity and credibility, yet change.

Baton

While MSY or the Lalus will continue to behave like delusional village-elders, never letting-go of controls, venting post relinquishment-blues, Sonia yearns to abdicate, albeit now a queen without an empire.

Yet, in her case, the princeling is nowhere near ready to take full responsibility, known as he is for his unpredictable disappearance into vipassana-ic retreats, forget putting up a fight for power.

The septuagenarian founding fathers of UP and Bihar will continue to eye the elusive post of PM. Post-relinquishment remorse?

Had the founding father of the first family of corporate India, Dhirubhai Ambani, been around he would unlikely have resisted a power-shift to his sons having groomed them enough to step into his shoes.

Neither is Ratan Tata heard of downsizing his corporate heir, Cyrus Mistry, once he delegated control. Professional and meritious bequeathment is free of puppeteering controls, when elders pass on the baton when the time is right.

Besides, it is incumbent upon the inheritors of wealth and power, amassed over decades, to improve the plight of citizens and stakeholders who were born less privileged, instead of infighting within themselves or scapegoating sons for failures of their own.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

Last updated: October 14, 2016 | 15:02
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