Breaking down the question
The task word is discuss, and the object is the changing nature of political elites. The candidate must therefore trace a trajectory — from the composition of the elite at Independence to its contemporary character — and account for the forces driving the shift.
A political elite is the minority that holds decisive power in the political system. The question rewards an answer organised around who they are, where they come from and how their social base has widened over successive decades.
The note on political parties, pressure groups and the elite grounds the discussion.
How to approach it
Open with the elite framework — Pareto's circulation of elites offers a useful lens for continuous replacement of one governing minority by another. Then periodise: the English-educated national elite of the Nehruvian era, the agrarian and regional elites that rose through the 1960s, and the backward-class and vernacular leadership that has since transformed the field.
Close by noting continuities — dynasty, wealth and now criminalisation — so the answer registers both democratisation and its limits.
Model answer
A political elite is the small group that occupies the commanding positions of political power. Pareto's circulation of elites — the perpetual replacement of a ruling minority by a rising one — offers a frame for India's post-Independence transformation.
The Nehruvian elite. At Independence, the political elite was drawn largely from the English-educated, upper-caste, urban professional and landed strata that had led the freedom struggle. Rajni Kothari's Congress system described a dominant party mediating between this national leadership and local notables.
Widening of the social base. From the 1960s, land reform, the Green Revolution and electoral competition brought agrarian dominant castes into legislatures. The decline of Congress dominance, the Mandal moment and the rise of regional parties then propelled backward classes and Dalits into political leadership — what Yogendra Yadav termed the second democratic upsurge and a vernacularisation of politics.
New attributes of the elite. The contemporary political elite is more regionally rooted, less English-speaking and more socially diverse. Yet the change is uneven. Dynastic succession persists across parties; the growing role of money and the criminalisation of politics narrows entry by other means; and business-political nexuses concentrate influence.
The nature of the Indian political elite has thus shifted from a narrow, upper-caste, metropolitan leadership towards a broader, vernacular and caste-plural one — a genuine democratisation of representation — even as dynasty, wealth and muscle set new barriers to open circulation.
Examiner's perspective
The common failing is to describe caste politics generally without keeping the elite as the analytical object, so the answer loses its focus on who governs. The examiner wants a clear before-and-after: the composition of the elite then and now.
Strong answers periodise, use an elite theorist as a frame and cite the Indian scholarship — Kothari and Yadav — while balancing the story of widening representation against the countertrends of dynasty and criminalisation. That two-sided conclusion demonstrates the evaluative discussion a ten-mark question rewards.