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By:

Anuradha Rao

3 March 2025 at 9:18:19 pm

The Problem with One-Face Politics

From Kanhaiya Kumar to Arvind Kejriwal, Indian politics offers a warning about movements that struggle to grow beyond one dominant face. Watching Abhijeet Dipke rise to prominence recently made me think of Kanhaiya Kumar. Not necessarily because of their politics, but because of a pattern. Kanhaiya did not emerge alone. During the JNU agitation of 2016, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and Anirban Bhattacharya were also prominent voices. Yet one person became the most recognisable electoral...

The Problem with One-Face Politics

From Kanhaiya Kumar to Arvind Kejriwal, Indian politics offers a warning about movements that struggle to grow beyond one dominant face. Watching Abhijeet Dipke rise to prominence recently made me think of Kanhaiya Kumar. Not necessarily because of their politics, but because of a pattern. Kanhaiya did not emerge alone. During the JNU agitation of 2016, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and Anirban Bhattacharya were also prominent voices. Yet one person became the most recognisable electoral political face of that moment. Dipke, too, is part of a movement with other articulate people around him. Yet increasingly, one name travels. That raises three questions for any movement or political party hoping to become a serious electoral alternative. Can the party nurture more than one face? Can those faces make big ideas understandable? Can one of them eventually take over? Similar Patterns Irom Sharmila moved from extraordinary moral authority as an activist into electoral politics, but that authority did not translate into votes. Jaya Prakash Narayan built Lok Satta around governance reform and institutional change, but strong ideas did not translate into large-scale electoral strength. Akhil Gogoi moved from grassroots activism into Raijor Dal and built an electoral presence, but the organisation remains strongly identified with him. Chandrashekhar Azad moved from the Bhim Army to the Azad Samaj Party and then into Parliament. His next test is whether the organisation can grow beyond his own appeal. Then, there is Arvind Kejriwal. India Against Corruption had several formidable names around it: Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Kumar Vishwas and others. Yet over time, AAP became overwhelmingly identified with Kejriwal. Politics naturally seeks a protagonist. Charisma, timing and communication matter immensely, as does media attention. The problem arises when the organisation stops looking beyond that face. What happens to the second, third and fourth people? Are they given responsibility? Are they allowed to build their own constituencies? Are they exposed to the public often enough to become independently recognisable? Or does the success of one leader quietly become the ceiling for everyone else? Perhaps, it is far too early to ask this question of Dipke. Perhaps it is too early to ask whether he has a succession plan. We do not yet know clearly whether he even sees his movement becoming a conventional political party, or what shape he ultimately wants it to take. But it is not too early to ask what happens to the talent around him. Succession is a late-stage question. Talent visibility is an early-stage one. A movement reveals something about its future long before it contests an election: through whom it allows to speak, whom it trusts with responsibility, and whether others around the founder are allowed to build their own identities. Succession Woes This is hardly limited to politics. Indian organisations have struggled with the same issue for years. Family-run businesses have a clear succession path. Whether the next generation is always the best choice is another matter, but the direction is obvious. Outside family businesses, the problem is often more glaring. Companies speak endlessly about leadership pipelines, high-potential talent and succession planning. Yet when a long-serving chief executive or founder leaves, boards often find that nobody inside is ready. Was there really no talent, or did the organisation fail to recognise, retain, stretch and give it enough room to grow? That question matters even more today because what we once recognised as talent may no longer be enough. The skills that made someone successful ten years ago may not be the skills needed for the next decade. Politics faces the same problem. Recognising talent is only the beginning. The second challenge is whether that talent can communicate. Yogendra Yadav is a useful example. Few would question his understanding of Indian politics, elections, rural India, or public policy. He brings nuance to issues that deserve it. But nuance has a difficult relationship with electoral politics. A voter should not need a seminar to understand what you are proposing. That does not mean dumbing down ideas. India will need serious thinking on artificial intelligence, jobs, education, agriculture, climate, cities and demographic change. Political leaders will need intellectual depth. But depth must be translated. The real skill is making something simple without making it simplistic. A leader must understand the ten-year problem and explain its relevance in ten seconds. Politics needs intellectual depth in the engine room and clarity on the dashboard. Perhaps this is why one person sometimes races ahead of equally intelligent colleagues. The political star may not be the person with the most sophisticated argument. It may be the person who can make that argument understandable beyond the room. Then comes the third question: can one of them eventually take over? Congress has spent decades responding to criticism that leadership succession repeatedly returns to one family. The BJP faces a very different situation. After more than a decade of Narendra Modi dominating national politics, discussion of who will follow him remains largely speculative. When does a party start preparing for what comes next? Certainly not when the chair becomes vacant. Future leaders need years of preparation before the public. They need to govern, campaign, debate, explain difficult ideas, face criticism, make mistakes, lose occasionally and recover. More importantly, several people need that opportunity. Succession planning should not mean identifying a single successor in advance. It should mean ensuring there are choices. Which brings me back to Dipke. Perhaps the interesting question is not whether he becomes another Kanhaiya Kumar, another Kejriwal, or disappears from public memory. The real test of a political organisation is not whether it discovers a star. It is whether it knows what to do with all the talent standing around the star. (The writer is a learning and development professional. Views personal.)

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

Why is Mamata Seeing Ghost of Bangladesh?

Mamata is seeing a ghost of Bangladesh behind the massive outrage and waves of protest over rape and murder of the trainee doctor. And the reasons are many.

It’s been over a fortnight. Yet with each passing day the voice of protest is getting louder and stronger. From the streets of Kolkata it’s pouring into roads of hinterland. The cry for justice for a rape victim has consolidated into a wail of demands to set a lot of wrongdoings right. Here in lies the fear and trepidation. Wasn’t the issue that brought the youth of Bangladesh out on the thoroughfares a simple, innocent one of quota reform?

The chief minister of Bengal, known for understanding the pulse of people better than many, was quick to read the signages floating in the political horizon.

The most obvious reason for her to be tensed is that both the regime change in Bangladesh and the mass protest in Bengal, were student-driven to begin with. The two incidents---end of 15 year old Sheikh Hasina government and turbulence in West Bengal, over the heinous crime, falling back to back, the first on August 5th and the latter from August 9th onwards, give natural scope for comparisons. More so, because in both the cases the movement strayed beyond an affected constituency to include aggrieved people at large, cutting across socio-economic demography. If the quota reform protest started by students in Bangladesh became a mass uprising against an autocratic regime, the campaign demanding justice for the rape victim and overall safety and security of women in Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal soon snowballed into a movement of no-confidence against the government. Slogans--”Mamata must resign” also got floated in social media much in line with the call for ouster of Sheikh Hasina. In fact “Resignation of Hasina” became the single point agenda into which all other fringe demands coalesced.

Incidentally, even before people started drawing parallels, that there could be a thread of commonality in the way the upheaval in Bangladesh and Bengal played out, Mamata was quick to point out that the Opposition were trying to pull off a Bangladesh by politicizing the tragic incident: “A coordinated approach has been executed by the BJP and the CPIM with support from the Centre to defame Bengal and exploit the situation....They want to make a Bangladesh here. They are taking cues from student unrest in Bangladesh and are attempting to capture similarly. I have no longing for the chair. I came here to serve people.”

Not only Mamata, her political lieutenants are consistently equating the turmoil in Bengal with the mayhem in Bangladesh. Cabinet minister for North Bengal development Udayan Guha threatened to take stern action against those, who would be trying to exploit the situation by emulating a Bangladesh like movement. “ Even after the hospital was vandalised, the police did not open fire on anyone. The police will not allow a Bangladesh type situation. We will not allow Bengal to turn into Bangladesh, Guha thundered.

Is the government’s fear unfounded?

Apart from the similarities on ground zero, as to how and where the future course of events are heading to, there are ample reasons for Bengal to mull on-- as to what led to a Bangladesh like boiling point. To begin with, it’ll be appropriate to talk of Bangladesh and the prevailing situation, that made the students’ protest become big in magnitude. The students were out on the streets because of a high reservation in public jobs. Unemployment and stagnant job market in private sector coupled with a high rate of inflation drove the educated youth to rebel against the government.

But soon the students found enormous number of sympathisers, who were equally at the receiving end. According to Bangladesh citizens, the last two terms of the Sheikh Hasina government were a mockery of democracy. Even elections would be compromised. As Hasina grew from strength to strength, she politicized institutions. The rank and file of police owed allegiance to the ruling dispensation. Extortion, harrassment and raids by police and people in power became rampant. An atmosphere of fear and repression reigned and people got restless to overthrow the government.

Politicization of institutions has been happening in Mamata government too. Allegations are quite strong that police in Bengal functions at the beck and call of political bosses. The lapses and alleged loopholes on the part of police in handling the rape and murder of the young doctor have yet again revealed a sense of confused or misplaced loyalty.

But above everything else both Hasina and Mamata governments allegedly seem to have twined in accepting corruption as a way of life. In Bangladesh jobs of primary and secondary teachers got sold at premium, Rs 10-12 lakh in the Hasina regime. Even police had to pay up for prized postings and transfers. In Bengal busting of the teacher’s recruitment scam has revealed how unsuccessful and ineligible candidates got government jobs in schools in exchange of bribes.

Similarities are multiple and inescapable. Mamata has good reasons to be apprehensive. It’s not only she, who can see and connect the dots. People, out on the streets, clamoring for justice, can see a providential pattern somewhere in the unfolding of future events in these two places-- Bangladesh and Bengal. True, they share more than 2,217 odd km of border. They share the same umbilical cord, other than language, culture, ethos, icons. Even emotions are the same. So she cannot take any risk.

(The writer is a senior jounalist based in Kolkata. Views personal)

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