Jyotiraditya Scindia had just turned 30, was about to start his own business, when he lost both his father and grandmother. It was then that he entered formal politics.
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00:00And so I came back to India sometime in early, mid-August of 2001.
00:07I lost my grandmother in January of that year, and within nine months, I lost my father.
00:13Suddenly, two generations just left.
00:30I had been away at Stanford for two years, I was pursuing my MBA, and my parents had
00:47just come for my graduation in May of 2001.
00:52And whilst I was at Stanford, I had participated in a business plan competition.
01:02And as it turns out, my colleague and I, with our business plan, we had won the competition.
01:10And therefore, we were pretty much set on the path of making that idea, which was on
01:18a piece of paper, into reality.
01:22And so I came back to India sometime in early, mid-August of 2001, and we were looking for
01:30office space and hiring people and things like that.
01:32And within a month and a half of me coming back, and I was in Bombay, this happened on
01:40the 30th of September, and it pretty much changed my life.
01:45I lost my grandmother in January of that year, and within nine months, I lost my father.
01:54And so suddenly, two generations just left.
02:01So it's beyond grief, and at least for me, it made me introspect, it made me slightly
02:11philosophical, and it changed a lot of my worldviews, and it changed a lot of the views
02:18I had on life.
02:19You are the man of the family now, and you've got to be responsible.
02:24So there's no time for grief, and there's no time to wallow in yourself.
02:30You are now responsible for others, and others beyond your immediate family.
02:35A lot of people that look to my father for leadership, for resolution, and one feels
02:42responsible because at the end of the day, for us, the family is not the immediate family.
02:48It is the people of the region.
02:49It is all of Gwalior, Chambal, Malwa, all of that.
02:53I then got into politics and ran for the first time for parliament in 2002.
03:00But you didn't have any political inclination till then?
03:03Like, did you have a conversation with your dad about politics?
03:07My father was, okay, so let me rewind, I was certainly involved in an unofficial capacity
03:15with him since the age of 13.
03:19I first campaigned for him in 1984.
03:21So I was all of 13 years old, and I remember that campaign very vividly.
03:28And I campaigned for him in every election since, except the last one, which was in 99,
03:34I believe, because I'd just gone to Stanford, so I wasn't here.
03:39So I was very much involved with the region, with some of his projects and things like
03:46that, but in a peripheral manner, not in a direct manner.
03:50I did not have aspirations of joining politics at that point of time.
03:55I was much more focused on setting up a business.
03:58But then fate, at times, Smitaji deals you some cards, and you have to accept them and
04:05take on the challenge at that point of time.
04:08But if you ask me 20 years down the road, would I change anything in the way fate has
04:20taken me down a different path?
04:22My answer is unequivocally a no.