Goa sent a pro-stability, anti-dynasty message; when will others follow?

In the din of news and views about poll results from Uttar Pradesh, the country has missed two important messages from tiny, idyllic, touristy, laid back Goa. If only the voters act decisively, dynasties can be effectively stymied, and by giving a clear majority to one party or alliance, the aya rams and the gaya rams can be put out of business.Dynastic features have not been new to Goa but this time, when a few families wanted to carve out turfs larger than they ever had, the state bucked and ensured that of the 12 nominees from five families, seven were asked to stay home for five years. It so happens that these nominations were secured from the Congress and these long-time political families are also known as ‘Congress families’.In an assembly of 40 MLAs, perhaps a tad larger than a village council, one member short than the magic figure can keep the government on tenterhooks, and the habitual party-switchers hold the key, thereby dictate polices. Most of the ills in Goa—illegal mining, rise of the mafia, the riches of the developer-builders—stem from this malice.[caption id="attachment_239257" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Away from the foamy. Reuters"][/caption]That is why the electorate went after two choices: a simple majority for the BJP and with Maharashtra Gomantak Party, a clear majority. Any destabilising has to be by splits but then, politicians never hesitate to try anything to remain in power or return to it. Goa has been notorious and horse-trading is one of its vices.However, there is a third but distressing message emanating from Goa. It chose not to send a single woman candidate to the legislature. That is retrograde, while the other two have been positive to the extent that rest of the country should take notice and act. For India is fast filling up with dynasts who convert politics into a tool to run businesses and own constituencies.Five families which sought to tighten their stranglehold on its politics for business model are of Pratapsingh Rane, Ravi Naik, Babush Monserrate and Pandurang Madkaikar and Churchill Alemao. Each of them save the Alemaos secured two nominations each; Alemaos were conferred four and interestingly, voters asked all four—two of them ministers—to stay home for the next five years. These nominations, you guessed it right, came from Congress.There are strong reasons why they were sent to the launderers. Goa, small like a large village, has everyone knowing almost everyone else. Political power, administrative reach, riches, and where required, use of muscle can be too strong a combination for people to ignore for it can be felt in their everyday lives. These fiefs are not just sensed but seen because of the outrageous trappings they take to, dwarfing the common man, intimidating him.When an oligarchy of a few families from one party would decide on whether your street needs new lamps or what legislation to adopt for controlling mining, then the common man can sense an impending hell. Since these families have the potential to make or break governments, fears compound. Being powerful, they control, or influence every other institution, elected or otherwise as well as the administrative machinery, from the local cop and the dog catcher upwards.It is moot whether rest of the country has tired of dynasties as much as Goa has, though conceptually, in each Assembly and parliamentary constituency across the country, families do control vast geographies than is good for a democratic system. Its institutions are converted into feudal arrangements, concentrating power, ending aspirations of non-family members to be part of participatory government. The participation is limited only to periodical voting after which the families take over.Has Goa sent another message, more specific to the Congress, by discarding a majority of its family-based nominees? It perhaps has because it was an in-the-face defiance of people who want a democratic option, not choices based only on a candidate’s DNA, but which did not seem to have concerned the Congress. After all, that party’s only strength has been a dynasty, little else besides. If only all the 12 had lost their claims to represent the people been rejected, the Congress may fully wake up.For, after all, The Dynasty did not work in Uttar Pradesh.Perhaps, if its post mortem of debacles is in earnest, the Congress would realise that the Nehru-Gandhi family’s sheen has worn off. That in a place like Uttar Pradesh, workable options to replace Mayawati and her Bahujan Samajwadi Party should not have been restricted only to an unshaven princeling of no political experience.His being put to work for votes must have seemed more an effort to strengthen—which actually seems to have been the case—the claims of the family for the next top job: the prime ministership. People must have questioned the temerity of the party in presuming that dynasty matters more than the people.True, India is not new to dynastic families. The Nehru-Gandhi family, of course, is the Indian royalty. In the absence of spunk amongst Congress politicians who cannot come to terms with each other. They have to depend on the centripetal force that family offers. Congress would have long disappeared, or even lost its relevance. So small dynasties were replicated, like in Goa, but for tiny Goa, it promised suffocation and the people shrugged it off, though some baggage remains – the five others who got elected.