The story of contemporary India is the story of coming to terms with the legacy of two families: the Gandhis and the Ambanis. Taken literally, this statement is, of course, absurd. But it is often a summary way of thinking of India's power structure. Recently, in a lecture, I was making some quick remarks about the shifting bases of social power in India. The British Raj, for instance, used to be dubbed the Brahmin-Company Raj. A young man piped up, "I suppose we are in the Gandhi-Ambani Raj."

Any comparison, taken too literally, stretches the truth. There is something farcical in comparing a business and a political family with such different genealogies, sensibilities and tastes. But there is some analytical value in thinking together about these two family enterprises in power. In the annals of business and politics, there are few families that have exercised such dominance. There is widespread muttering against their power, yet their dominance seems inescapable. We live in their shadow even when we have no faith. Indian democracy revolves around the Gandhis more than it should, as Indian capitalism revolves around the Ambanis more than it should. The Gandhis have shaped our form of democracy, as the Ambanis have shaped the nature of our capitalism. But, in a subtle way, both also act as fetters on the maturation of democracy and capitalism.

Both are, in a fundamental sense, beyond the ordinary standards of democratic reproach. You can criticise them in the abstract, but candour about them is impossible. Try publishing something on the Ambani business enterprise and you will quickly recognise the subtle censorship that pervades the public sphere in India. Except for fringe right-wing groups, the Gandhis are treated with more self-censorship and deference. Both have had family feuds of sorts, but it strengthens rather than weakens the mainline business.

The analogies go on. Both construct their legitimacy with a story about the past. The Gandhis are the vessels of Indian national identity. They are the familial embodiment and acquired near monopoly over true nationalism. The Ambani story is more complicated. For all the early murkiness, they embodied a new national aspiration. The joke that the Indian economy had moved from self-reliance to Reliance captured a new Indian identity. And Dhirubhai Ambani was memorably recast as an insurgent revolutionary: breaking down old shackles and restraints. Both position themselves in relation to a certain kind of populism; their inordinate power, by definition, serves the national good. What is good for the Gandhis and the Ambanis is good for India.

Both, despite themselves, become models. It is often joked that any political party that comes to power in India will have to be like the Congress: a large tent, held together by a figure from nowhere that can paper over contradictions. It is increasingly clear that any enduring aspirant to success in Indian capitalism has to have elements of the Ambani model, like an ability to manipulate the state. Both have uncanny success. Everyone around them seems tainted by scandal yet, despite whispers, they remain unscathed. Despite criticism, there is a basis to their legitimacy. It is harder to dislodge them than most of their opponents suppose. It is either a measure of their power, or something of a miracle that just at their moment of great weakness, their competitors display even more weakness, making them harder to dislodge.

Both are, in a sense, creatures of the state. The Ambanis may position themselves as those that broke down the old system. But the fact is that their legendary implementation capacity, notwithstanding their success, depended on orienting the state in their direction. The Ambanis are the poster children of a pro-big business government; they are not harbingers of the free market. The Gandhis are not embodiments of social democracy, they are about using the largesse of the state for patronage and building coalitions.

Both encourage a certain kind of anti-intellectualism. The Gandhis long gave up the idea that intellectualism means anything more than positioning yourself as a patron of the poor; the Ambanis are not about a form of creativity that can take the world by storm or fashion new products and identities. They are powerful, yet do not ignite aspirations. There is a little bit of a mystery about how they actually think; something mysterious about how they actually create sinews of control.

Both are also at a crossroads. But this is also the crossroads of modern India. The Gandhis seem to have a fleeting recognition that two premises of their power no longer hold as strongly as they did earlier. They cannot rely on inherited legitimacy. And the party needs to reinvent itself in modern terms as a proper organisation, not a family presiding over an amorphous mass. The Ambanis too need modern professionalism. And they position themselves at two levels: the old business model to extract as many special concessions from the state, but failing that they prepare to compete in a genuine market. Both, fleetingly, recognise, that power founded on arbitrary discretion can have its limits. But both repeatedly fall back on it.

Both are also at another crossroads. They no longer have unchallenged sway. The federal structure of India ensures that there will be political competition. It also ensures that from time to time other rival capitalists arise who can manipulate state power. These challenges are not yet strong enough to dethrone them. But they cannot entirely have their way either. Their power to block is now greater than their power to dominate. To simplify, they have power, but they cannot quite use it to produce power. It could be argued that is where Indian democracy and Indian capitalism are stuck. Indian democracy, despite occasional attempts, is struggling to find modes of negotiation at the centre that can bypass the Gandhis. Big capital in India is still excessively focused on how it can manipulate the state, rather than how it can promote genuine innovation.

There is a deep question whether one begets the other. Are the tendencies that the Gandhis and the Ambanis represent two independent streams, or are they dialectically related to each other? Such is their power, that this question cannot be properly researched. In the abstract, the nature of Indian democracy and Indian capital are mutually constitutive. The result is a bit of plutocracy, with a neglected population, a crude instrumentalism and lack of candour about real power. But this is the story of modern India: two families that by a strange alchemy have become indispensable. But also two families whose current legacy needs to be transcended.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, express@expressindia.com

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