The BJP today said the trend of political families and dynasties over-ruling merit was a challenge that needs to be dealt with if India wants to fight the problems it is facing currently.
"Structured political parties being centered around families....Structured families and dynasties replacing the criteria of merit.
"This is one challenge if actually we are able to address it, it may impinge on the kind of thought process we have and kind of perspective we have to issues," Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said.
Interestingly, he said this was a trend seen more in political parties which were formed post-1990 when economic reforms were taking place in the country.
BJP has been accusing the Congress of practising dynastic politics and targeted the Nehru-Gandhi family for it.
Jaitley was speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
The parties, which were formed post-reforms, have been "caste-centric" and their social support base defies even performance while social sanction is given (by the electorate) to even to those who lack integrity, Jaitley said.
The senior BJP leader enumerated lack of progress in agriculture production, poverty among tribals, the way successive governments have dealt with the Kashmir problem, insurgency within the country and outside it as the other challenges facing the nation in the next two decades.
"There still will be a large part of India which will be living in poverty. And one area I am particularly worried about where I don't see any significant movement taking place is bang in the centre of India- the tribal areas," Jaitley said.
He said the growth level in agricultural sector has been nominal. "Our population is perhaps going to increase faster than our agricultural growth," he said, adding that this may shatter the country's dreams of being a surplus food economy.
On the Kashmir issue, Jaitley said, "We have lived with it for over six decades which should give us a historical perspective about how we tried to resolve it was fundamentally erroneous. There were blunders we committed. In the last six decades every generation has paid for it."
He called for a change in the Centre's policy towards Kashmir. BJP has often accused the Congress-led UPA government of being soft towards the separatists in Kashmir.
"The issue arising in and on acount of the Kashmir problem... Unless the governments of the day realise that the roadmap we adopted was fundamentally erroneous and needs to be substantially changed (the issue cannot be resolved)," he said.
Speaking on the occasion, CPI-M leader Brinda Karat said there were different forms of terror plaguing the country like "terror of hunger, of malnutrition, the terror of your child dying as you do not have access to medical facilities".
Karat said the 2G spectrum allocation scam has shown that there is a "most malignant nexus" of certain forces and the nature of politics in India was being increasingly determined by big money.
"Of the candidates with an income above Rs 5 crore, 33 per cent won the elections," she said.
