As the great-grandson, grandson, and son of Indian prime ministers, Gandhi’s political pedigree is not in question. Nor does his loss in Amethi mean that dynastic politics are over in India, where a new generation of politicians can trace their positions directly to their parents and grandparents. (Indeed, both his mother and his sister easily won their seats.) But the electoral humiliation of a scion of the Gandhi family, indeed the leader of the party that led India to independence from Britain, is striking in a region where dynastic politics have dominated the landscape for decades: The Gandhis in India, the Bhuttos and the Sharifs in Pakistan, the Bandarnaikes in Sri Lanka, and the descendants of Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman in Bangladesh have all been integral parts of their countries’ modern history. This parliamentary election, and Gandhi’s loss in a constituency whose past is closely intertwined with his family’s, is the most compelling sign yet that India has moved into a new era. [...]
One possible reason for this is that while the Congress Party has inexorably linked itself to the Gandhi family, Indian voters have moved on. This is a young country where half the 1.3 billion people are under the age of 27. The overwhelming majority of them are from modest backgrounds. In such circumstances, the story of Modi, the son of a tea vendor who, with no political godfather, became the most powerful Indian prime minister in decades, is a far more compelling narrative than that of Rahul Gandhi, a man who has seemingly had success hand-delivered to him.
Another possible reason is that Indian voters prioritize performance, rather than the lineage of a candidate—in fact, several regional political families won resounding victories in these elections. For whatever reason, the Congress Party, which has ruled India for 51 out of 71 years of independence, and the Gandhis, who have ruled for 36 of those years, no longer seem to fit the bill.
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