On the one hand it is unsurprising that with time, there would be an increasing pool of people entering politics whose ancestors were also active in the same profession, which George of Harvard University called a “purely mechanical function of time”. Nevertheless, the impact of political power becoming concentrated in a few families remains a concern.

“It’s not that dynasts getting into politics is inherently bad or unusual, but it means our political representatives are becoming far removed from citizenry,” Rahul Verma, a fellow at the New Delhi think-tank Centre for Policy Research, explains. “We have a class of people who are making our laws skewed in favour of the few, and that is bad for any democracy.”

A third of people surveyed recently said they thought politicians actually care what ordinary people think and 58 percent said nothing really changes following an election, IndiaSpend reported on March 26.

Several countries have elected members of the same family to their highest offices, from the US and Japan to the Philippines and Indonesia, so India is not unique. In fact, politics the world over is a highly dynastic occupation. Individuals are 110 times more likely to enter into politics if they have a politician father, compared to other elite professions such as medicine and law, according to this 2018 study.

Being a young country too means a certain level of dynasticism in politics is to be expected and that the rising political families holding power may yet continue for some time, Verma said. “Once you cross say 20-25 elections in around 100 years, then you would expect to see this trend going down,” he said. “You can look to the US as an example of this and how in the future we would expect to see the rate eventually decline.”

Within this election period, prominent political families, such as the Abdullahs, Badals and Patnaiks, continue to make their way onto parties’ candidate lists. One of the reasons established families continue to flourish is their ability to leverage wealth accumulated across their tenure.

Competing in an election is a notoriously costly business, and one that is only getting more expensive. Major contenders were spending anywhere between Rs 1 crore and Rs 16 crore in 2014, almost 50 times the statutory limit. Investing tickets in candidates that contribute both funds and a certain amount of hereditary political or ‘brand’ capital, mean dynastic candidates then are an attractive option for political parties.

The number of successful independent candidates in Lok Sabha elections has fallen from a peak of 42 in 1957, to no more than three in 2014, a symptom of the rising costs of contesting elections, Chawla of LSE IDEAS said. “The reason why you have dynastic politics in India is therefore much more structural and to do with how democracy functions in our society.”