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B. S. Raghavan

THIS is the title of an article by Mr Paul Krugman that appeared some time ago in the New York Times. He starts off with the Bush family in which the US presidency passed from father to one son, while the other son became a Governor, and trots out the examples of the offspring of and family members of the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, and the Supreme Court Justice, Mr William Rehnquist, kindling in passing memories of the Kennedys, Rockefellers and Sulzbergers whose progeny too got a leg up in politics, industry and newspaper business from their parents. In his view, far from meritocracy being the ruling criterion for advancement in the US, society is falling for good breeding and turned off by the vulgarity of talented upstarts. He concludes wryly that family values are fast acquiring the connotation of values coming from the right family!

At least in this matter, the US is 60 years behind India. Mr Krugman should know that we hold the patent for the title of his piece itself! We have had the Nehru dynasty ruling the political roost all this while, with the prospect of its continuance via Ms Priyanka, Master Varun et al for as far as one can foresee. However, it is unfair to single out Nehru, because the sons of Ravi Charan Shukla, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Devi Lal, Charan Singh, Dr Farooq Abdullah, Mr M Karunanidhi and many others are thriving in politics on the strength of their familial background undoubtedly supplemented, at least in part, by their own merits.

There is also the brood of famous politicians making good, may be, not in politics but in business and industry. In fairness, it must be mentioned that inherited status, whether with or without justification, is not the feature of the political class alone. The non-political governing class too has enjoyed its advantages. For instance, in the year I joined the IAS, the UPSC — which was dominated by the blue-blooded, twice-born ICS — was predisposed to candidates coming from the families of their own ilk. In the fields of music, dance and fine arts as also among scientific and academic communities, instances of achievements running in the family are not uncommon. It will be churlish to dismiss them as undeserved manipulations by influential parents

Is inherited status necessarily suspect? Should the family members of luminaries in politics, business or the power structure in general be, for that very reason, prevented from exploiting opportunities coming their way? The answer can only be a resounding no to both questions.

After all, remember, the contributions of pejoratively described Nehru dynasty itself have been of no mean order. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, while they had their share of foibles and faults like all human beings, demonstrated their fitness for the leadership thrust on them. Similar has been the experience in respect of the other examples from public life. People are not fools to accept inherited mantles alone without some stuff in those wearing them.

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