Saturday, December 17, 2005
BJP vs Congress - Who Has the Better Bench Strength
If you read between the lines, it seems like what remains of RSS is a pretty small bunch of old hands, a handful of sadhus etc. and not much else. The best right-wing talent is with the BJP, and the BJP is basically Advani, Vajpayee and, in Gujarat, Modi. There are folks like Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan, Uma Bharti, Govindacharya etc who form the second line of leadership. There does not seem to be much more bench strength in the party.
At this point, both Congress and BJP seem out of leadership stock. There's no concerted attempt on either side to cultivate the 'next generation'. No Barack Obama's on their horizon either.
The politically-active NGO sector has no shortage of top-quality talent - people like Aruna Roy of the Right to Information fame, Magsaysay award winner Sandeep Pandey and hundreds of other charismatic, grassroots-trained activists whom either party would be smart to co-opt.
