Interesting! Some bits of post election analysis from TV

Is this the resurgence of the (Nehru-Gandhi) dynasty? With Rahul Gandhi being credited for engineering the Congress's performance in UP, do we see the Gandhi family rising again. Senior Journlist Inder Malhotra felt otherwise on CNN-IBN. And his quite astute analysis of the rise dynasty politics makes one believe that he is correct. 

Mr. Malhotra (who is also a biographer of Indira Gandhi) noted that Nehru was known as a vocal opponent of nepotism, and Indira Gandhi did not even contest a seat in the 1962 elections [1]. And while Sardar Patel's son contested [which then was not seen as nepotism anyway], Indira did not until the death of Panditji. It was actually Indira who brought in the dynasty politics by projecting Sanjay (and later Rajiv) as her heir.

What was worse is that in order to ensure the family upperhand in politics, she destroyed careers of any cadre-risers in the party, in effect also weakening the party organization and hence leaving critical issues on the table which were exploited by regional forces in the 90s to rise. This lead to the Congress' downfall in key states like UP, Bihar, and Delhi. 

Mr. Mahotra in his analysis clarified that what Rahul has done is the complete anti-thesis of what Indira did. He has strengthened the party organization, connected with the cadres and thus ensured a win in UP. Hence, if the Congress wants to go back into forming government on its own - Rahul must invest another term in strengthening the party.

Another debate on CNN-IBN highlighted the difference between the rise of the father (Rajiv) and son (Rahul), as in Rajiv had little organizational experience before he was forced into Prime Ministership. Rahul on the other hand has invested quite some time in the party and can for another term do so if he wishes before he may want to ease himself into the PM's chair.

Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP, looking quite unfazed by the showdown, threw another set of analyses out. He felt that the result is for National parties and against regional/leftist parties. When asked as to why only the Congress has benefited by this fall of regionalism and not the BJP, Rajdeep Sardesai came to his rescue explaining that most of the states where regional parties have taken a beating are parties which the BJP is anyway absent and Congress was the only rival in such states.

In terms of analysis, CNN-IBN came out pretty well but Times Now was better at capturing soundbytes from winners and losers. NDTV has not been that great and less said about the likes od Aaj Tak and IndiaTV, the better.