There are two reasons for any appointment: One, there is nobody else and the second, there is somebody else. After months of expectation, a new Cabinet has been sworn in. The Prime Minister has said that this will be the last Cabinet reshuffle before the next elections, but that need not be taken seriously. He might have said it to prevent disappointed people from pestering him; he might have said it to give the incumbents a sense of confidence that they will not be disturbed and will have a couple of years to plan and operate(!). According to virtually all commentators, the reshuffle has been a damp squib. The Cabinet is old, older than the previous one, with average age above 60, and above 65 years if Cabinet Ministers were alone taken into account.

When asked who else should or could have been included, the critics could not find a name – except Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar; his inclusion would have raised the Cabinet age further.

CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP

It appears as though the recent appointments were made on the basis that there is nobody else. That has been the problem since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru. Mr S K Patil, a well-known Mumbai MP and a minister in Nehru's Cabinet, would say that Nehru was like a banyan tree: it gave shelter but would not let anything else grow under it, except some shrubs. The way the Congress Party operates, nobody grows under the party except hangers-on; the party offers next to no scope for new leaders to emerge in a nation of 1.2 billion people.

The psychologist Carl Jung once remarked that the true leader is always led. Ms Sonia Gandhi has some such characteristic. A prominent intellectual of Cabinet minister rank said once that she listens to all opinions and then gives her decision.

That is an admirable trait – except that she listens to only those who kow-tow to her authority and mercilessly excludes everybody else. The result is she gets only nuances of the same kind of thought but not alternative thoughts; she promotes obedience and not leadership. In India, most leadership devolves by inheritance. The originator of the dynasty is invariably a champion of the poor and the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, his children are born to prestige and even to wealth.

Often, they do not have the capabilities of the progenitor. Yet, such is the power (and wealth) of the progenitor that the descendants inherit not merely wealth, but also political power. Apparently, our legal system has no means to check such aggrandisement; it does not check even how the progenitor and the descendants acquired the wealth they have.

In addition, our culture has a preference for a monarchical system with considerable tolerance for the foibles of the royal family. In recent years, there has been an acceptance that political families can make money even when they do so by far from legal means. It was not always so.

EMERGING POLITICAL CULTURE

Mr. Atulya Ghosh was for years the treasurer of the Congress party. When he died he left nothing but his ancestral house. On the other hand, we have Mr Jagan Reddy, the son of the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, who has challenged the authority of the Congress party only because his father allegedly retained for himself large part of the money presumably collected for the party.

The public does not seem to bother about the fact that Mr. Reddy's father allegedly amassed huge wealth within a short time. Possibly, another political dynasty is about to start. Is there a solution to this sad state of affairs?

Fortunately, there are some indications, slight as yet, that the public mood is changing. Recent elections have shown that money is valuable, but an excess of it can actually become a burden. How sad and humiliating it should be for a person brought up and living in luxury to be confined in jail? How much more sad and humiliating it should be for the fond parents? Thanks to media pressure, this has actually occurred. Have the political families learnt a lesson? One cannot be sure, but they should realise that politics should not be safely treated as a caste with children automatically following the profession of the parents.

MAKE MPs IMPORTANT

Money is at the root of all this evil. Politicians have a peculiar mindset: they do not mind making pots of illegal money but hesitate to pay for themselves a decent wage which is enough for themselves, their children and their grandchildren.

Recently, the amount under the MPLADS scheme was raised to Rs. 5 crore a year. Thirty years ago, I proposed in The Hindu that MPs' salaries should be that high but the MPs converted that idea into the MPLADS scheme. Just imagine what MPs would feel like when they get Rs. 5 crores a year and that is further indexed to purchasing power parity? If all election expenses too are met by the state, would they be as corrupt as they are now? Will they be mere hangers-on or will they act as responsible representatives of their people?

Let us make MPs important and as independent of political masters as MPs are in the UK and Senators and Congressmen are in the US. Professors in Oxford and Cambridge are well known but the vice-chancellors are rarely, if ever, heard of. That is how Parliament should be – MPs should be well known but the ministers should be virtually unknown. As in the US, ministers may not even be MPs. That is the kind of a system our country needs.

However, as Lord Keynes said, the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras. Response to > indiresan@gmail.com and >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in )

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