Showing a path

A former Deputy PM and once a BJP prime-ministerial candidate, LK Advani, has been displaced from his parliamentary seat, one that he won six times. The man who worked over many elections for Advani’s electoral success — current party president Amit Shah — has been nominated for the seat by the BJP. The party’s veteran leader, it would now seem, is in the politically twice-retired category, having been sent to the lofty fringes of the Margdarshak Mandal in 2014 and now out of the reckoning for the Lower House of Parliament. 

While it is hard to imagine Advani being reduced to this extent politically, it is not difficult to sell the notion that the hustle and bustle, the dust and dirt of a Lok Sabha campaign is not for a 91-year-old. Age has been no bar for politicians in India. If indeed this is a principled decision of the BJP, based on the criterion of age, it would be a precedent-setting one, worthy of emulation by other parties too. There has to be a time when the old make way for the relatively younger, and what better than the political parties themselves taking action in this regard. No progress was made on the issue of reservation for women candidates by political parties until the BJD decided to reserve 33 per cent seats. Others have now begun to follow suit, and there is some hope that the old, regressive patriarchal setup that has dominated politics, across party lines, will also begin to change. 

Family hold on political constituencies has also long been an unhealthy aspect of Indian politics. Here, too, examples abound from various parties, including those that are vocal about their ideological purity or their rivals’ political dynasties. Politics can do with fresh blood, preferably one that does not have a politically inherited lineage. How this ideal plays out in the hurly-burly of Indian politics is another matter. How about one of the senior-most political leaders who is now not a contestant? Well, there is always the Rajya Sabha to consider, after all, it is the House of Elders.