Now we know why India's most powerful dynasty is so long lasting. Its members are clairvoyant. They can foresee events years before they occur. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi revealed a closely guarded family secret. She said that Indira Gandhi by nationalizing private banks forty years ago succeeded in protecting India from the fallout of the global economic crisis. 

Ah, so that was why Indira Gandhi did it! She ignored the horrible mismanagement and corruption of nationalized banks for these forty years. Public sector bank directors were appointed by politicians on the precondition that they would supply the latter hefty payments at the end of each year. Professional banking took a nosedive. 

More than a decade later Indira Gandhi started the loan melas to parcel out money from these banks to impoverished jhuggiwalas. This was done to win votes. As a minor political activist I partially frustrated partisanship in this move. With 500 to 1000 activists from jhuggis that belonged to my outfit we would descend on various branches of the nodal bank of the scheme, Punjab National Bank (PNB). We paralyzed the bank by demanding loan forms. This was a perfectly legitimate demand. By choking the bank with numbers the bank's operations were suspended. The police would swoop down to detain us for five to six hours and release us without charge because we had broken no law. We carried no banner inside the bank and technically we went as individuals.

Eventually the head office of PNB approached me. It promised loans for 1000 of our activists for ending the demonstrations. We complied. Our members collected the loans. They never repaid them. During this wholly anti-social activity I discovered that bad debts to reputed big business houses exceeded a thousand fold the loans given to jhuggi dwellers. I hammered away at this fact. I was gratified after Indira Gandhi seized this fact to justify the loan melas. So she knew all along how nationalized banks were playing footsie with big business and politicians. But she also must have known, as Sonia Gandhi has revealed, that forty years after bank nationalization there would be a global economic meltdown. To save the banks she nationalized them. 

Indira Gandhi was not the only clairvoyant in the family. Some time back Rahul Gandhi revealed that his father had told him that had he been PM he would never have allowed the Babri Masjid to be demolished. Since the Masjid was demolished more than a year after Rajiv Gandhi died, he too must have been clairvoyant. With this kind of power running through the dynasty, what chance has the opposition?

Poor LK Advani could not even foresee India Darkening!