Youth

Yesterday, in one of those unexpected little political victories, Rahul Gandhi jabbed back at Rajnath Singh- who had called Mr. Gandhi a 'baccha' in a recent interview.
"I may be a baccha, but 70% of India are bacchas. That's the change they want"
Now I'm no big fan of the Congress Party, nor a huge supporter of Rahul Gandhi, but I gotta admit that what he said was both clever as well as pretty gutsy. And from the media coverage that quip has received, I think it was a pretty successful maneuvre.
The fact is, it's true. India is an extremely young country! And yet, it has been ruled by a succession of dinosaurs- some of whom were relatively competent dinosaurs, but dinosaurs nonetheless. Even in the reform period, we've seen Narasimha Rao, IK Gujral, Deve Gowda, AB Vajpayee and now Manmohan Singh. All depressingly antique.
The other day, I was talking to a rickshaw driver, who after some slightly slanted questioning, figured out that I was American. Of course, the immediate leap in conversation was to Obama, and we started talking about the election. As I tried to explain to him why it was so amazing that we had elected a black man into the office for the first time, I realized that he wasn't really interested in the race issue. Instead, he kept repeating over and over again, "But he's so young!! Such a young man as the president!"
It's true, while much of our presidential race was focused on the fact that we could be electing an African-American to the presidential post for the first time, the reason why his message of change really stuck with us has gotta be largely due to his age. We could relate to the guy, his humor was kinda like ours, his interests were similar to ours, it explains the cult following. And its something that has been somewhat overlooked.
In India, where the population is even more concentrated in the 20-30 age range, I feel like the parliamentary democratic system is robbing the citizens of something huge. Without any primaries for the political parties, PM choices are largely political maneuvres, with much less effect on the final outcome of the election. Yes, often local MLA's are younger and closer to the people, but if there's one thing that this US presidential election has taught us, it is the importance of an inspirational leader at the helm.
To really move the country forward, India deserves a young leader. Today there's much talk about Mayawati, the Dalit leader who is challenging for the position of prime minister. While impressive and somewhat progressive that there's a prime ministerial hopeful from this historically maligned group, the truth is that she has run a campaign of divisiveness and hate, and there is little indication that this would abate if she won the post.
This at a time where the country is being pulled at its seams. Sectarian conflict, secessionist groups and terrorist activity seems to be constantly ravaging the country, and every couple months, a new party forms to greedily grab a piece of the crumbling vote bank pie. And then every five years, these parties cobble together a coalition with lots of duct tape, making a mockery of the term majority.
No, what this India deserves is a real majority, a real unifier, and in particular a prime minister who is young and who comes with a message of change. But the likely truth is, it won't happen until the entire political system is overhauled.
We can't wait!

- Nikhil