Malia, 16, currently the best known among them, is President Obama's daughter. Although she has shown no political inclination - unlike Chelsea Clinton - one never knows how things will pan out once she gets rid of those braces. Mila is President George "Dubya" Bush's granddaughter from his sororal twin daughter Jenna. She is just over a year old. Perhaps too early for a political debut, but again, you never know. Five generations of political lineage starting with her great, great grandfather Prescott Bush can't be ended so easily, now that her granduncle Jeb Bush seems likely to take a shot at the White House in 2016. 

And Miraya? That's closer home - she is Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's daughter, only 12 and still in boarding school, but surely on the lips of some desperate Congress workers blessed with the survival instincts of the order Blattaria? The US and India rid themselves of colonial rule derived from monarchial expeditions with the pledge to give power to the people; political power had to be earned, not inherited. Notwithstanding such idealistic sentiments , dynastic succession took root in both countries from the get-go . John Adams served as the US' first vice president and second president, and after a couple of other founding fathers had their turn, his son John Quincy Adams served as the country's sixth president. 

In India, Jawaharlal Nehru, scion of Motilal Nehru, began grooming his daughter Indira very early on. She in turn groomed her son Sanjay Gandhi, and when he died, persuaded his elder brother Rajiv Gandhi to take up the mantle. When he died, it "fell" on his widow and son to continue the family banner even as Sanjay Gandhi's widow and her son too rode in from the BJP side - all four Gandhis are now in Parliament, an institution that is home to nepotism - on all sides, in all parties. 

After tailing off for a bit, the US is now catching up. After the Adams succession, it took the country more than a century to repeat the fatherson feat in the White House when George H W Bush became the nation's 43rd President after his father served as the 41st. Now his brother Jeb Bush could be shooting to become the 45th President, with a likely challenge from the wife of the 42nd President, Hillary Clinton, making it a Bush-Clinton match-up for the second time in less than 25 years. 

It may not even be the last time, considering there are several other Bushes in the country's political shrubbery. Jeb Bush's son George Pierce Bush won an election in March this year to become Texas Land Commissioner to start his career as an elected official. Meanwhile , Chelsea Clinton has said she might run for office some day, after marrying into another political family . Her husband, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, is the son of Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky , a former Pennsylvania Democratic Congresswoman , and former Iowa Democratic Congressman Edward Mezvinsky. 

Of course, the most famous political clan in America is the Kennedys, who count one president (John F. Kennedy), one attorney general (Robert F. Kennedy), three senators (John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy) and three congressmen (Patrick Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy II and his son Joseph Kennedy III), one lieutenant governor (Kathleen Kennedy Townsend) and three ambassadors (family patriarch Joseph Kennedy, who served as ambassador to England in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, his daughter Jean, who was an ambassador to Ireland during the Clinton administration ; and JFK's daughter Caroline Kennedy, the Obama administration's US ambassador to Japan), among other minor luminaries. 

Every time the Kennedys threaten to fade away, a new Kennedy pops up. This is something the Rockefellers could be hoping for. Like the Kennedys, the Rockefellers have been a constant in American politics and public life, and the decision by Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, to retire in 2014 means the US will be without a Rockefeller in high office for the first time in four decades and just the second time since the 1950s. But no need to panic; help is on the way. In addition to the proliferating Bushes and Clintons, America is blessed with several political dynasties, including the Landrieus of Louisiana (who include two New Orleans mayors and one senator), the Hutchinsons of Arkansas (one congressman and one senator), the Pryors of Arkansas (two senators), the Meeks of Florida (two members of Congress), the Kilpatricks of Michigan (one congresswoman and one mayor), the Carnahans of Missouri (two congressmen, a governor and a senator), and the Udall family, which includes multiple members of the Senate, the House, city councils and various other offices spanning both major political parties over more than a century. 

Some Americans find this disturbing . Former First Lady Barbara Bush herself has expressed dismay that the country cannot look beyond the Bushes and a few other elite American families. "I think this is a great American country, great country, and if we can't find more than two or three families to run for high office, that's silly, because there are great governors and great eligible people to run," she said once, hoping that Jeb Bush would not run for the White House despite his excellent qualifications because he would inherit all the enemies of his father and his brother. (" What date is Mother's Day this year? Asking for a friend," Jeb Bush tweeted in response). 

But others, like the Clintons, have been more sanguine about extending the family tradition that is now only into the second generation. In fact, some commentators think the whole issue of dynastic succession has been overhyped. "Please, let's give the hyperbole a rest. America has repeatedly lived up to its ideal as the place where anyone from any background can become president," Bill Scher, a political analyst, wrote recently, arguing that one race between two impeccably qualified people with familiar last names (Bush and Clinton) "is not going to suddenly shut out all the community organizers, peanut farmers, and haberdashers who dream of being president some day." 

By Scher's reckoning, of the 17 presidents the US has had in the last 100 years, only four came from wealthy, aristocratic, politically connected families, and two of those were Bushes (plus a Roosevelt and a Kennedy). The other 13, he says, came from "earthier stock." None had parents in national politics, and the fathers of future presidents were mostly a mix of farmers, grocery store owners, and salesmen. "The American electorate has been meritocratic, and not aristocratic . One race isn't going to change that," Scher maintains. 

But critics of the system point out that dynastic succession is becoming more common - not less - in US elected office. As it often happens in South Asia, at least 18 American women have been elected to the House or the Senate to fill seats left vacant by the deaths of their husbands . This is now such a common political practice that such elections and appointments have a term: widow's succession. And nearly 10% of the members of US Congress had relatives enter Congress ahead of them. So while a Clinton vs Bush is quite likely on the cards in 2016, it is not improbable again in 2032.