LUCKY SPERM CLUB

With his election as BJP’s Lok Sabha MP, T.P.S. Rawat has become the latest entrant to what Warren Buffet calls the ‘Lucky Sperm Club’. Although the American billionaire used the term to describe children who inherit great fortunes, it can be applied equally to heirs of famous names in two distinct fields that sometimes overlap – films and politics. Both spheres require no qualifying test and many of the recipients of this biological largesse are lucky to be there because they do not have the brains or the ability to make the grade on a level playing field. Like India, America too has its political bigwigs. Most of them are offspring of senators, governors or even presidents. It helps financially and psychologically to have a familiar brand name. It gives its bearer a head start, but it also helps to cover up some of his, or her, weakness.

The most famous recipients of the lucky sperm today are, of course, the Bushes, with one being the president and other a governor. But the drawbacks of the system, too, have made obvious by the current flag-bearer of this name whose advanced state of befuddlement will, no doubt, be a setback for the dynastic cause. As in India the inheritance of political legacy in America is not confined to the offspring of bigwigs. The lucky list includes four siblings, four widows, and several wives, including one Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton who may one day be making a pitch for the top job. Their number was barely 24 in 1986, but sisters and daughters (and widows and wives) are now pushing their way into an area that was earlier marked only for brothers and sons among relatives. So the number is going up and up. The world’s oldest and the largest democracies have at least one thing in common.