This note was triggered by an article of ‘Patrick French’ which looked at the composition of the Lok Sabha and came to the conclusion that a significant minority of the Members of Parliament [henceforth MP(s)] had political family backgrounds. According to this study the breakup was as follows (descending order)[1]:
1 | No significant family background | 46.8 |
2 | With family background | 28.6 |
3 | Student politics | 8.6 |
4 | Business | 6.4 |
5 | Others | 9.6 |
All number in percentages.
Mr French also provides numbers for the political back ground of the “gen next” Lok Sabha members. These numbers are quite intriguing. According to Mr French’s analysis, the majority of MP (Lok Sabha) seats are earned so to speak, with a significant minority being cornered by the politically influential. What is significant here is that an overwhelming majority of the gen next politicos are from political families, with many winning from regions which have been loyal to their family for at least a generation. These seats might be considered a version of the English phenomenon of ‘Pocket Burroughs’.
I am not writing this post to actually comment on this article, nor to bemoan the alleged decay in Indian democracy. My main purpose is to see if I can do a similar analysis, with collection, sorting of information and analysis of trends. To this effect, I have chosen to do a comparative analysis of the political backgrounds of the 116th United States Senate. The US Senate was chosen to fulfil twin objectives of gaining experience in analysis and to put the Lok Sabha numbers in perspective by creating a counterpoint. Let me clarify that as I wanted to see how I would fare in my first attempt, I have not looked at the numbers, research methodology or information sorting system employed by Mr French. This would be done after the first attempt.
I am compiling information on the senate members, with information sourced from the open source web. The initial list will only contain information on senators that have politically backgrounds in my opinion. I would here like to explain my under-construction understanding of “Political Background”. As has been mentioned before, the definitions and methods employed by Mr French have not been looked at, except a cursory look at his article. A general online search does not provide a definition of “political background” which would be independent of regional context. An attempt at defining political background is fraught with pitfalls as more often than not it might include self-made individuals who might be part of popular families or might exclude individuals who are politically strong but are not in the public eye.
I believe that irrespective of individual capabilities the power of ‘linkages’ helps in tangible means, albeit ones which do not lend themselves to 2 paragraph descriptions on ‘Wikipedia’. This is one of the larger challenges for a researcher that is lack of a local context. The category for defining a senator as one having ‘political background’ is to confirm the senator has someone in the family who is or has held political posts in the government. As I have chosen to give importance to the power of linkages i have also included family members who hold or have held posts in the military or diplomatic corps especially if these posts were held at significant moments of national history.
Examples are the reefs on which many a definition founders. Especially if the definition is an tenuous as the one above. I have sought to place importance on strong hereditary political influence. This however is inadequate in categorizing individuals who have attended schools with future leaders; or if an individual’s close relations marry into a political family; or if only the first wife was from a political background.
The list of Senators with political backgrounds is being provided below:
[I have to attach the documents as .png format as Blogspot does not allow excel to be incorporated into the post.]
Analysis should come up this weekend.
[1] http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?269931; http://pragmatic.nationalinterest.in/2011/03/20/on-hereditary-politics/
