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Home , Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, Murasoli Maran, Shivraj Patil, Sitaram Kesri

COVER STORY THE GOVERNMENT

NARENDRA BISHT AS THE OMNIPOTENT PARTY PRESIDENT AND THE LEAST THE RULE OF POLITICAL PRIME MINISTER, AND HERALD A RARE DUALITY IN POWER. HOW THE ODD COUPLE OF INDIAN POLITICS MAKE IT WORK.

I By Bhavdeep Kang TWOhey are not exactly the twin towers of Indraprastha. omnipotent leader and the obedient prime minister mark a Neither are they the soaring symbolism of yin-and- quiet but definitive shift in the tradition of power sharing— yang of power. They are an item nevertheless. Call also the way is run. And it is mainly because of the mys- them the mandarin and the Madonna. The chosen tique of the leader’s surname: Congressmen are yet to see manager and the choosy mother figure, holding bet- the difference between the power of a Gandhi and a Gandhi ween them a nation that is being introduced to a in power. In retrospect, the melodrama of renunciation was newT duality, not yet bipolarity, of governance. He was an the ceremony of empowerment. Sonia’s power may not accident, the least political of them when politics was a have the constitutional mandate; it certainly has the history-shifting astonishment. She was an inevitability, the sycophantic mandate, and that is what matters in the most dramatic in a dynasty that was staging a belated home- Congress, like the legacy of the paramount leader in the coming. Today, together they maintain the erstwhile communist empires. balance of power as an unequal pair in a Be fair to the leader, she plays out the partnership without a precedent. The Sonia- power script without visibly undermining— Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. or overshadowing—the prime minister. As it The prime minister and the party president. Manmohan was on Independence Day. Manmohan was The relationship is a bit more than that, and relationship late, quite unusual. The AICC top brass, as- also a bit less than that. Manmohan, who sembled at 24 Akbar Road to watch has given matter-of-factness a philosophical marks a definite Congress President Sonia Gandhi unfurl the touch, is the least prime ministerial of the flag, grew restive and murmurs of “why does prime ministers India had, at least in his shift in the Madam have to wait?” were heard. demeanour. It is as if he is doing a decent job “Madam” was imperturbable. There was no of what has been assigned to him, his words tradition of power mistaking the warmth with which she or action never making a stir. Sonia is larger sharing in India. greeted the prime minister, who appeared than the size and scope of her office; she is relieved (having finally delivered the speech the great helmswoman, looming over South he had rigorously practised for three weeks). Block as Our Lady of the Last Word. Rearmed by renuncia- “They are good together; the one not too self-conscious, the tion, she is today the wielder of absolute power. Set against other not too self-confident,” says an AICC general secretary. her aura of inheritance is his austerity. She is authority with A perfect pair, indeed. little responsibility, and he is diluted authority with full Another Kodak moment: the prime minister and Sonia PERFECT PAIR: Sonia has played out the power accountability. Incompatible? But it does work. pausing outside the elevator at the Parliament House Library script without visibly And the dynamics of this relationship has reduced the after a Congress Parliamentary Party dinner, both in pahle overshadowing Manmohan distance between 10 Janpath and 7 Race Course Road. The aap mode. Sonia insisted the prime minister precede her and

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NARENDRA BISHT L ON HER PLEASURE CENTRE OF GRAVITY: While Sonia deftly handles the Pulak Chaterji, joint secretary in the PMO, briefs allies, Manmohan quietly gets on with governance “Madam” on a daily basis. He deals largely with appoint- Rajiv’s Camelot in Sonia’s dream saw him off to his car before leaving. And the most charm- ments, in which it is common knowledge that 10 Janpath team—the best and the brightest ing pixels of all: Sonia bidding the prime minister bon voy- has a decisive say. LL GWAJAHAT HABIBULLAH, TEXTILE SECRETARY age with a rose before his Bangkok visit. “Sonia is the Prithviraj Chauhan, minister of state in the PMO, briefs The 1968 batch J&K cadre IAS officer embodiment of procedural and political correctness,” says her on a weekly basis on everything else. has served in ’s PMO. Soon a cabinet minister. “And she is punctilious to the extent of Once a week, “Madam” descends on Race Course Road after the UPA took over, he returned being squeamish,” he adds. Even when she announces a with Ambika Soni and in tow for a pow wow from the US and was given the job. relief package from the prime minister’s fund in with the prime minister, Home Minister Shivraj , she takes care to add that the prime minister has asked her Defence Minister , HRD Minister Arjun to make the announcement. Singh and the other odd minister, usually Ghulam Nabi G NAVIN CHAWLA, I&B SECRETARY Sonia is mindful of his dignity. When Manmohan was to Azad. Other ministers and bureaucrats are summoned as The 1969 batch IAS officer and his wife leave for Bangkok and requested his cabinet colleagues not and when required. Rupika Chawla are close friends of the to see him off, she personally called them up and saw to it L LL LL Railway Minister Laloo Yadav discusses the Godhra Family. A Sanjay Gandhi crony, known that they showed up—making it a point to do so herself. probe with 10 Janpath but “forgets” to clear it with RCR. better for his role during . When the media created a hue and cry over the fact that she Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde takes was being invited abroad by foreign governments rather off for Bangkok, a fact the prime minister only discovers GKAMLESH SHARMA, UK HIGH COMMISSIONER than the prime minister, she put her foot down and asked after trying to reach him on the telephone. The former permanent representative to External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh to put an end to the Telecommunications Minister disap- the UN was part of Rajiv’s band of loyal- public invitations. pears to for 12 days without a by-your-leave. ists. The retired career diplomat was An honourable division of labour? Yes, on the surface Water Resources Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi is a Sonia’s choice for the coveted posting. there is a positive synergy between the party and frequent traveller—he sends his tour programmes to 10 Government, with Sonia doing the heavy political lifting and Janpath as well as the PMO. He also writes to Sonia on get- GRONEN SEN, US AMBASSADOR Manmohan attending to the mundane tasks of governance. ting rural and urban potable water projects to his ministry A 1966 batch IFS officer who retired in Take a closer look, and the script reveals who is who. Sonia from the Rural and Urban Development ministries. April this year, Sen had recently served is the protagonist, the leading lady, and Manmohan is a sup- When Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer a stint as high commissioner to the UK porting player.Or so the conduct of the other players—mem- feels certain departments under the Urban Development and was part of Rajiv’s PMO. bers of the council of ministers, chief ministers and senior ministry should be transferred to him, he writes not just to bureaucrats—would appear to indicate. the prime minister but to 10 Janpath as well (a committee

20 INDIA TODAY N AUGUST 30, 2004 COVER STORY THE GOVERNMENT

of secretaries is examining the issue)

L ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN MANMOHAN SINGH’S STYLE In terms of intelligence inputs, sources say the special adviser separately briefs both the prime minister and the MANMOHANISMS Congress president.

L Sonia’s kitchen cabinet... ON GOVERNANCE Among the ministers who would rather call on 10 Faithfully Janpath than the prime minister are Laloo, Natwar, Arjun Singh (who does not meet Manmohan at all) and Patil. If Asked that his some of the senior Congress ministers like Mukherjee, photograph not Natwar and Arjun Singh display a marked reluctance to re- Yours port to the prime minister, there are historical reasons. In he prime minister’s wardrobe is a reflec- be used in ads the past, these colleagues have been his bosses in the gov- tion of the man himself. Like his reputa- issued by ernment or the party. Moreover, Manmohan is a prime min- tion, Manmohan Singh is always seen in ister by nomination, not by election. T SHIVRAJ PATIL: Sonia gave him ARJUN SINGH: a crisp, spotless, white kurta with the top but- ministries. A prime minister who has been made to be less than the coveted Home portfolio Ardent loyalist ton closed. This is a man who likes to play his I prime? Not for the Congressmen, for whom, Manmohan will despite his defeat. and RSS basher cards close to the chest. On formal occasions, always be a prime minister-by-royal-decree. And he seems he wears a bandgala or else a Nehru jacket. Ministers told to be quite comfortable with this arrangement, for Sonia’s Most other times, he is in a Gandhi strait- not to air policy overarching moral authority works to his advantage, jacket. Never has the PMO been so apolitical. relieving him of political duties he is not capable of. “His job The politics of running the government is left issues in public is to run the Government but not sustain the Government,” to Sonia Gandhi leaving the prime minister says AICC General Secretary Salman Khursheed. “Sonia is free to administer the state. Every prime min- before Cabinet providing the political fuel. He is the fighter craft and she is ister looks for a label that sells. A.B. Vajpayee approval. the tanker craft.” And they meet at least once a week at 7 wanted peace with , P.V. Narasimha Race Course Road. According to a PMO official, there is no I Rao ushered in liberalisation and Rajiv fixed day for this meeting though initially it used to be Gandhi, the computer age. With Manmohan Saturday. She does not push him because he is a reluctant Told ministers PRANAB P.M. SAYEED: MANI SHANKAR it is administrative reforms. prime minister with a penchant for his own version of not to misuse the MUKHERJEE: Swapped Lok AIYER: Eternal But when he wants to, Manmohan can renunciation—he threatened to quit once as finance Wanted Home, Sabha loss for family loyalist, play politics. Just before addressing the press PSUs. minister during the P.V. Narasimha Rao years, and to quit but had to settle seat has finally been in Thailand, an aide asked the prime minis- politics twice thereafter.It is Sonia who deals with a fractious for Defence and ministry rewarded ter if he wanted to freshen up. Manmohan re- I Left through CPI(M) General Secretary H.S. Surjeet and with torted, “Kya sher bhi kabhi daant saaf karta Ministers told to the troublesome RJD, trading on her personal equation with hai (Does a lion ever clean his teeth)?” Laloo. As UPA chairperson, it is she who manages the and Sonia’s aides... However, Manmohan’s Independence come up with coalition, and she has handled the allies better than Day speech reflects his attitude to his high of- expected. Like her late husband, she has strong likes and fice. Addressing the nation from the Red Fort, innovative ideas dislikes, but like , she also has the ability to he said, “I have no promises to make, only to get the compromise if the circumstances demand. promises to keep.” Making promises is the job of a politician. Manmohan’s job appears to be government In a move that will further institutionalise the predomi- more bureaucratic in nature. Says an official: closer to the nance of the party, she is actively toying with the idea of “While writing his speech, he looked at a having ministers sit in the AICC office at 24 Akbar Road to newspaper headline that said that the sugar NO-FRILLS MAN: people. address the concerns of party workers. The modalities Manmohan with wife I AMBIKA SONI: Sonia’s confidante, AHMED PATEL: industry expected an Independence Day I have yet to be worked out but the basic idea is to bridge the always at her elbow. In copycat Low-key, Sonia’s package. And he commented that he was not SIPRA DAS gap between organisation and government. And her preoc- gesture, refused ministry. troubleshooter going to make any announcements but would bungalow was Rajiv Gandhi’s residence No files to be cupation with the Rajiv ideal has altered the prime minister’s deal with issues instead.” when he was prime minister. And Sonia’s taken directly to development vision. As finance minister Manmohan was His first official function as prime minister famous walk-in closets are still there. more concerned with boosting the growth rate. Today he em- was symbolic in the kind of image he wanted Manmohan’s day begins with a cup of tea the PM for phasises building social infrastructure and poverty allevia- his PMO to reflect. Given the choice of ad- made by his wife and a morning walk. He approval, but tion. “Sonia’s style may be that of Indira Gandhi, but the dressing the CII, attending an ISRO conference goes to South Block in the morning and the substance is Rajiv,” says a party general secretary. in Bangalore or visiting drought-affected vic- evening is spent at 7 Race Course Road with only through Sonia has a morbid fear of making mistakes. That may tims in Andhra Pradesh, the prime minister a two-hour lunch break in between. During explain her committee fetish. Three committees control UPA’s chose the last option. During the past three the day, he does enjoy endless cups of tea proper channels. mind: the National Advisory Council, whose purpose is to months, Manmohan has visited only five with Marie biscuits. The prime minister is a I oversee the implementation of the Common Minimum venues in Delhi: Vigyan Bhavan, Parliament, teetotaller. It was a message that was rein- Programme (CMP) and includes such luminaries as Aruna South Block, Race Course Road and forced during his Thailand trip where no al- Wrote to CMs to Roy, , Sam Pitroda and Jean Dreze; the UPA PULAK M.K. NARAYA- J.N. DIXIT: Rashtrapati Bhavan. Manmohan lives at 5 cohol was served on the official section of the Coordination Committee; and the Congress-Left Front CHATERJI : NAN: Another High-profile improve delivery Briefs Sonia Rajiv loyalist, Sonia appointee, RCR along with his wife. No other member of plane. In other words, Manmohan Singh Coordination Committee, whose one-point agenda is to settle daily, was in pulled out of relatively recent by Priya Sahgal systems. the family stays with him. Incidentally, this runs a no frills set-up. the sharp differences between the Government and the Left. Rajiv’s PMO retirement Congress recruit Sonia chairs all three.

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REUTERS A QUESTION OF SENIORITY: Manmohan’s Cabinet has ministers like Mukherjee, flanked by colleagues Laloo (left) and Pawar, who are senior to him

This committee raj started by Sonia has initiated the minister), which includes Laloo, , Ram Vilas tyranny of consultation: the prime minister has been fre- Paswan and Maran apart from Arjun, Shivraj, Mukherjee, quently heard to say that he needs to “consult” on certain P. Chidambaram and Natwar. The all-powerful Cabinet files before taking a view (to his credit, he does make Committee on Security, however,is pretty much an in-house notings, something his predecessor did not often do). If the affair, with the exception of Chidambaram, a Congressman bureaucracy expected the process of appointments—noto- in every sense except the purely technical. riously slow during L.K. Advani’s tenure in the Home Ministry—to speed up, that hasn’t happened. BHEL hasn’t he key appointments in the Government which took had a chairman for a year. The post of deputy chief of naval place quickly were dictated largely by 10 Janpath. One staff and director of the Institute of Defence Studies and thing that became obvious was that Sonia places a pre- Analyses are both hanging fire. “If the Appointments Tmium on family loyalty. Long-forgotten securitywal- Committee of the Cabinet took a month earlier, now it takes lahs who had served the family during the Indira and Rajiv two,” says a senior bureaucrat. years were dredged up and given choice postings; the lieu- Even within the UPA, there is little doubt that real power tenant-governor of Delhi being one example. The “walking- vests firmly with the Congress. The allies have been ac- stick” or “expiry-date” brigade one would have imagined commodated in the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs were headed for governorship or ambassadorial assign- (formerly defunct but now revived and chaired by the prime ments were given Rajya Sabha seats or ministerial berths. MANMOHAN’S CHOSEN FEW

B.K. CHATURVEDI: T.K.A. NAIR: Principal P.CHIDAMBARAM: M.S. AHLUWALIA: Planning Cabinet secretary secretary to the PM Finance minister Commission deputy chairman

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The spoils of office were spread rather thin. RULES OF POWER PLAY Still, Soniaites will insist she doesn’t intend to over- The dynamics of party president-prime shadow Manmohan—or control him. Like Rajiv, she wants minister relationship since Independence to be seen as a modern rather than a feudal leader—and like him, she has to preserve the Congress legacy of the GNEHRUVIAN ERA Gandhi durbar. Her instincts are democratic, party leaders ’s troubled rela- say, but she understands only too well that Congressmen tionship with Sardar Patel loyalist like to be led from the front. By a Gandhi, of course. The and Congress president majority of AICC general secretaries believe the party today Purushottamdas Tandon ended is more democratic than it was 30 years ago. Sonia gives her with Tandon’s resignation. Nehru general secretaries and her chief ministers plenty of rope. swiftly asserted himself and had She has a hands-on approach but without breathing down his men occupy the post there- anyone’s neck. after, thus eliminating the threat Sonia consciously projects herself as UPA chairperson of a parallel power centre. rather than Congress president. L It was she, rather than the prime minister or a member of his cabinet, who released a stamp honouring the late Murasoli Maran at the DMK office in Chennai last week. LLL L It was Sonia who announced a Rs 1 crore relief package from the prime minister’s fund for the children burnt in the school fire in Tamil Nadu. She also visited flood-affected Assam to take stock of the damage. She made an impassioned plea to the prime minister for relief to flood-affected . It was she whom Laloo met for funds for the flood- affected .

onia’s democratic instincts—if they exist—are in conflict not just with the Congress culture but also with her own instincts for self preservation, founded Sperhaps during the Narasimha Rao years when she GINDIRA ERA was out in the cold. At the root of many of her decisions is The Nehruvian era ended with the emergence of collec- this underlying sense of insecurity. Unless seen in that tive leadership and consensual approach under Lal light, the logic of appointing Patil, who can boast of experi- Bahadur Shastri. But the arrival of an assertive Indira ence in the Defence Ministry, to Home while allocating Gandhi saw the rise of a new Congress culture. Mukherjee, former chairman of the standing committee on K. Kamaraj, who as Congress president was instrumen- Home, the Defence portfolio is unfathomable. She does not tal in her becoming prime minister in 1966, soon be- want a natural No. 2, as Mukherjee would doubtless have came an adversary. Indira quelled all opposition and been if he had been given Home. When Manmohan visited ensured that party heads were lightweights handpicked Bangkok, he left written instructions (as protocol de- by her. In 1978, Indira as prime minister also took on mands) that Mukherjee would officiate in his absence. Her the party’s top job, a trend that would continue for the reported irritation with Arjun Singh’s ideological shenani- next two decades until 1997 when held gans can be seen in the same light. The RSS-bashing and elections for the party president’s post. more-secular-than-thou posturing are seen as being directed against Manmohan, whom Arjun has always GVAJPAYEE ERA regarded as a bit of a usurper. A.B. Vajpayee’s Sonia trusts no one, except her immediate family. The PMO began with so-called favourites Ahmed Patel and Ambika Soni, who being subservient to have maximum access to her, can’t be certain of getting the BJP but soon their way. If Ahmed Patel had his way in Rajya Sabha seat began to call all the nominations and portfolios, Soni was instrumental in the shots. Vajpayee was reorganisation of the party. For the most part, however, the the supreme leader top posts both in party and Government were Sonia’s per- while party presi- sonal choices. The closest she has come to trusting anyone dent M. Venkaiah within the party is Manmohan Singh. Her choice of the Naidu was a mere prime minister is based on the conviction that he won’t be apparatchik. a Frankenstein’s premier threatening the Family. Sonia’s finest political creation hasn’t let down his maker. by Lakshmi Iyer with Lakshmi Iyer

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