India’s next Prime Minister is most likely to come from the following set of people: Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, J Jayalalitha, Naveen Patnaik, Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee. The list is not exhaustive. But as a rough rule of thumb, it is in the decreasing order of each individual’s probability of realising their Prime Ministerial ambitions.
This set of people occupy different places on a wide ideological spectrum and are remarkably unlike one other in multiple ways. Mayawati is Dalit. J Jayalalitha is a Brahmin woman leading a party that traces its origin to the Non-Brahmin Movement. Naveen Patnaik is a posh man who seems to have outgrown his dynastic privileges. Mamata Banerjee is, well, her. Narendra Modi is a child of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Samiti. And Rahul Gandhi is a Gandhi. Their political mantles are things each has usurped or inherited or claimed or created from scratch or fought desperately for.
However, the one thing that seems common among these diverse aspirants is: they are all single and have remained so all their lives. They are well past the mean age for marriage in the society that each comes from. Each individual’s marital status taken in isolation is hardly interesting. But when top six contenders for the Prime Minister of 1.2 billion people are all single in a polity that is known for dynastic succession, it is interesting. The last political leader who was in control of his party to have occupied the post of Prime Minister — AB Vajpayee — also fits into the above category of people.
The women in the group are all self-made and do not owe their position to either a husband or a father. Their will is supreme in their respective party and no one questions their leadership. The other prominent woman chief minister — the married Vasundhara Raje from a royal family — is not as sure of her position in her own party. Sheila Dixit, as a three-term Chief Minister of Delhi who can’t be termed as completely self-made, wasn’t as sure of her’s either.
Among the men in the list, two out of three are dynastic successors. Their singledom could well be a perfect accident. And if one extends the list, the next in line are possibly Nitish Kumar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan; both married men.
The hypothesis one is tempted to put forward therefore is: single people are more successful in Indian politics across the gender divide. But for women it’s a necessary condition if they are self-made.
(Puram is a data scientist in Chennai. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on his blog.)
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This set of people occupy different places on a wide ideological spectrum and are remarkably unlike one other in multiple ways. Mayawati is Dalit. J Jayalalitha is a Brahmin woman leading a party that traces its origin to the Non-Brahmin Movement. Naveen Patnaik is a posh man who seems to have outgrown his dynastic privileges. Mamata Banerjee is, well, her. Narendra Modi is a child of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Samiti. And Rahul Gandhi is a Gandhi. Their political mantles are things each has usurped or inherited or claimed or created from scratch or fought desperately for.
However, the one thing that seems common among these diverse aspirants is: they are all single and have remained so all their lives. They are well past the mean age for marriage in the society that each comes from. Each individual’s marital status taken in isolation is hardly interesting. But when top six contenders for the Prime Minister of 1.2 billion people are all single in a polity that is known for dynastic succession, it is interesting. The last political leader who was in control of his party to have occupied the post of Prime Minister — AB Vajpayee — also fits into the above category of people.
The women in the group are all self-made and do not owe their position to either a husband or a father. Their will is supreme in their respective party and no one questions their leadership. The other prominent woman chief minister — the married Vasundhara Raje from a royal family — is not as sure of her position in her own party. Sheila Dixit, as a three-term Chief Minister of Delhi who can’t be termed as completely self-made, wasn’t as sure of her’s either.
Among the men in the list, two out of three are dynastic successors. Their singledom could well be a perfect accident. And if one extends the list, the next in line are possibly Nitish Kumar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan; both married men.
The hypothesis one is tempted to put forward therefore is: single people are more successful in Indian politics across the gender divide. But for women it’s a necessary condition if they are self-made.
(Puram is a data scientist in Chennai. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on his blog.)