Search the Internet           Tips

The Rediff Special/ Anvar Alikhan

When Jawaharlal Nehru approached the age of 70, the question began to be asked: "After Nehru, who?"

It slowly gained momentum and ultimately became a major topic of conversation through the late '50s and early '60s. And it's a question we would do well to discreetly start asking ourselves now: "After Vajpayee, who?" After all, we all have a lot riding on the answer.

There are various theories floating around, all of them put forward with great authority and confidence, all of them backed by insider knowledge and irrefutable political logic. But I will bet you one thing: when the answer finally emerges, whatever it is, it will take everybody completely by surprise. That's what history tells us, anyway…

Take what happened after Nehru. The front-running candidate was Morarji Desai. But he suddenly somehow got sidelined by a relative lightweight like Lal Bahadur Shastri.

After Lal Bahadur Shastri, nobody expected Indira Gandhi to be prime minister, not even Indira Gandhi herself. (In fact, a correspondence of hers with an old American friend, Dorothy Norman, shows that what Mrs Gandhi really wanted to do was to buy a flat in London and settle down there, keeping a paying-guest in order to support herself!)

After Mrs Gandhi, nobody really expected Rajiv to take over as PM (It was supposed to have been Sanjay all along, remember?). All Rajiv wanted to do was to be a good pilot and husband, and take his kids to Nirulas every Sunday for ice-cream.

After Rajiv, nobody expected Narasimha Rao to follow him to the gaddi. For heaven's sake, the man had one foot in the grave at the time, and he'd already put in his resignation on health grounds. But the elixir of power suddenly knocked five years off his life and put a new twinkle in his toes.

And as for people like Deve Gowda, Chandra Shekhar and Gujral, which political analyst in his right mind would have ever risked his career by predicting that they would they would become PM?

So, coming back to the question, after Vajpayee, who? He's done a great job; he was even voted prime minister of the all-Asian dream-team cabinet by Asiaweek magazine. But let's be realistic: nobody runs forever.

One theory that's making the rounds is that the next PM is going to be Chandrababu Naidu.

The logic runs thus: After Vajpayee, Advani is not going to be acceptable to the coalition partners. And therefore the only thing that'll stand between us and yet another mid-term poll is someone like Chandrababu. Someone who is politically middle-of-the-road enough not to be black-balled by anybody. Someone who has the stature and the CEO capabilities to head the new, Pentium-powered India. And someone who has the confidence of the United States (a point not to be under-estimated in today's uni-polar world).

All this sounds pretty logical. Until you stop and think that Chandrababu would be a complete disaster at the kind of consensus politics required by the head of a coalition government… and he's smart enough to know that. And, in any case, is the BJP likely to surrender the prime ministership on a platter to anybody?

So, after Vajpayee, who? Well, all one can say is that history suggests that whoever it is, it's going to be a bit of a surprise. But in any case it's something we need to start thinking about now.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

Design: Dominic Xavier

The Rediff Specials

Tell us what you think of this feature