Arguably no denouement in recent times has given as much satisfaction to the country’s smug and risk-averse Indian middle class as the comeuppance of Subrata Roy, the self-styled managing worker of the reportedly one-million strong Sahara Pariwar (family) which is actually a clutch of para banking companies, with claimed 30 million depositors spread across the badlands of Uttar Pradesh (pop.200 million). On March 15, the Mumbai-based Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) petitioned the Supreme Court to detain Roy and several directors of two Sahara group companies for failing to comply with a Supreme Court order to repay Rs.24,000 crore to debenture owners of unauthorised investment funds started by two Sahara companies.

Even if SEBI’s latest petition asking for Roy’s arrest is rejected by the apex court, the demand signals perhaps the beginning of the end of Roy’s meteoric rise to fame and fortune, after starting his para banking business in 1978 with a reported capital of Rs.1,500. Currently the Sahara India Pariwar owns the plush Grosvenor House Hotel, London; the New York Plaza Hotel; Amby Valley City spread over 10,000 acres between Mumbai and Pune, apart from the estimated Rs.24,000 crore collected as deposits in the Hindi belt of north India.

There’s obviously something fishy about Roy’s famous rags-to-riches story. But Sahara’s formidable counsel in the Supreme Court, Ram Jethmalani, has informed the learned judges that he is prepared to submit debentures issued by Sahara to 30 million investors which have been packed into 31,000 cartons, and are all set to be transported to the Supreme Court and/or SEBI for examination.

Although middle class India believes the Sahara Group has accumulated this fortune by fronting for India’s most corrupt and Croesus-rich politicians, and that SEBI and the Supreme Court are heroic institutions, your editor has another explanation. Sahara has actually collected small savings from many millions of ignorant peasants and villagers who are either roughed up by politically-connected goons and/or dissuaded by the country’s choked-to-the-gills and rapacious legal system from demanding their money back. Therefore the Supreme Court whose learned justices nonchalantly preside over the world’s slowest and most archaic legal system are to be blamed rather than praised.  

Anti-dynasty groundswell

Since it was first promoted in 1885 — ironically by an Englishman — as the first association of the indigenous upper middle class to engage in dialogue with our erstwhile British masters to extract a few political concessions, the Congress party has dominated the political landscape of India like a colossus. After developing a spine under great leaders such as Gokhale and Tilak in the early 20th century, it acquired traction and legitimacy under Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, to emerge as India’s most powerful political party. But rot seized the Congress after the sudden and mysterious death of prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Russia, and the ascent to power of Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi in 1965.

The sins of omission and commission of Mrs. Gandhi — splitting the Congress, bank and foodgrains nationalisation, institutionalisation of corruption, declaration of the Emergency etc — were numerous and enduring. But perhaps her most destructive legacy was legitimising dynastic rule within the Congress party. During the Emergency her son Sanjay was the most powerful individual in India, and after his death, she anointed her elder son Rajiv — a professional pilot with no political experience — as her heir. After his scandal-ridden rule and assassination in 1989, the Congress has been dominated by his Italian-born widow Sonia, who has anointed her son Rahul — who hasn’t been able to acquire a degree from any of the world’s best varsities he was sent to, and who has no worthwhile work experience — as Congress party leader and perhaps the next prime minister of India, should the Congress win the general election of 2014.

Inevitably, dynastic politics has had a cascading effect. In Karnataka several senior Congress leaders have put forward the names of their children as candidates in the assembly elections scheduled to be held next month. The septuagenarian former Union minister Jaffer Sharief has proposed the name of his grandson Rehman; incumbent Union minister K.H. Muniyappa is pushing for a ticket for his daughter, Roopa; and Union minister Rehman Khan is backing his son, Mansoor Ali. Ironically the final decision is that of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi who himself owes his position to dynasty politics. According to author Patrick French (India: A Portrait (2011), all Congress MPs in Parliament have been elected on the basis of family connections, a factor which has created a groundswell of resentment within the ranks of the party. Stand by for a great implosion!  

Mass participation premise

March 8 marked a new inflection point in the adventurous life of your editor and hopefully of this long-suffering republic. Not only because it was International Women’s Day, but also because it marked the debut of the Children First Party of India (CFPI) on the national stage.

The premise of the promoters of CFPI is that it may be too late to save post-independence India’s first or even the second generation, but it is possible to save the next. Yet the pre-condition of saving Generation Next — the world’s largest child population — is massive investment in education and human capital development which unfortunately, has been a low priority of governments in New Delhi and the state capitals. How this desideratum can be attained is set out in the CFPI manifesto which went online on March 8 (www.childrenfirst.in).

The party is built upon the foundational premise that at least one member of the country’s 40 million middle class households cares sufficiently about saving Gen Next to invest Rs.100 to become a subscriber-member of the Children First party. The rest will follow.

Admittedly, of a population afflicted with an irrational Stockholm Syndrome vis-à-vis the Congress and BJP and family parties in the states, and enfeebled by oriental inertia, this is a big ask. But the essence of democracy is that the future is in the hands of citizens. Neither CFPI nor God can help those who won’t help themselves.