New Delhi, Oct. 4 -- When Vaibhav Gehlot, son of Ashok Gehlot, the then chief minister, was elected president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association, a giant hoarding on behalf of Rajasthan Berozgar Ekikrit Mahasangh appeared at Jaipur's Sawai Mansingh Stadium entrance gate, congratulating Vaibhav on getting a new job!
The irony and satire in the hoarding could have easily beaten the daily witty 'Amul' ads. A body of unemployed youth was happy that at least one of them now has a job!
Vaibhav's case was not the exception; it's the continuation of a trend which has come into vogue in the last few decades for politicians to settle their children.
Vaibhav was first elected RCA president in October 2019 and re-elected in December 2022, when his father was chief minister of Rajasthan. He resigned on February 26, 2024, after the BJP came to power in the state. This sequence runs according to the power equation - father becomes chief minister, son becomes cricket president; father loses office, son is out of power.
As far as Rajasthan is concerned, Gehlot is no longer an isolated case. Five politicians from the ruling BJP, including two ministers, now have their children in the fray for positions in the upcoming Rajasthan Cricket Association election. In other words, a new generation of political heirs appears to be following in the footsteps of Gehlot.
For generations, for Indian politicians, the easiest way of settling their children in life was to get them into politics, banking on their family name and the loyalty of the constituency. For those not having an inclination for politics, setting up a business was the other option.
Now cricket administration has become the third and most lucrative option. Whether the aspiring cricket administrator has ever wielded a cricket bat is not important.
In today's India, if your father is a politician, he can get you or create a job for you, which Lester Burnham wanted in American Beauty: "I'm looking for a job with the least amount of responsibility." The phenomenon is hardly confined to one political party or one family. Indian cricket administration has for decades attracted politicians and their relatives.
Anurag Thakur, son of former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, rose through the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association and eventually became BCCI president. His brother Arun Dhumal later headed the HPCA and went on to the IPL Governing Council. The Dalmiya family turned cricket administration into a family tradition, with Jagmohan Dalmiya followed by his son Avishek in the Cricket Association of Bengal. The Scindias have had a similarly long association with cricket administration in Madhya Pradesh.
And then there is Jay Shah, son of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, whose rise through Indian cricket administration made him the most convenient symbol of the debate over political influence in the BCCI. He was hardly the first political heir to discover the attractions of cricket administration, but he became its most recognisable face.
Rajasthan's latest RCA contest suggests that the cricket pitch is becoming increasingly crowded with political heirs.
The unemployed youth who put up that hoarding at the SMS Stadium may have intended it as satire. But they accidentally produced the perfect slogan for this new Indian career path.
Why queue for a government job when your father can get you a cricket association? And perhaps that is the real joke. In a country where millions of young people spend years preparing for competitive examinations, waiting for vacancies and fighting over a handful of government jobs, political families appear to have discovered a rather more efficient recruitment system.
The only qualification required may be that your father already has a job in politics. And if that job happens to come with enough power, the child's career prospects can stretch well beyond politics - all the way to the cricket stadium.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.