A Maverick in Politics, Mani Shankar Aiyar’s memoir, offers a candid account of his political career, including his complex relationship with the Congress leadership
A Maverick in Politics (Juggernaut), the last volume of the three-part memoir of Mani Shankar Aiyar, who gained a high profile in politics principally because the Gandhis gave him patronage (to use his own description), is likely to keep readers suitably amused because Mani (as Aiyar is generally known) is all about sharp wit, at times an acerbic tongue, and funny stories about politicos. And these have not served him in good stead, as he acknowledges here. Also, these don’t make the real book.
The heart of the tale here deals with some serious matters because Mani is nothing if not a serious, reflective, individual. However, he did not shape high policy, events did not wait upon him, he was no arbiter in Congress party affairs. In the event, the writing can slip into unwonted desultoriness in the last chapters.
For a proud man with considerable energy though Mani is well into his eighties, does one discern here a sense of pathos — of fulfillment in the family realm but not in the realm of politics, his true love outside of the home? The question lingers.
As Panchayati Raj Minister
In the first Manmohan Singh government (2004-09), Mani rolled in quick time as between three main portfolios, suggesting that his suitability for each came into question with the moving of the goalposts by government and the change in government objectives — a fairly common occurrence to which a quick-footed politician adapts, but not necessarily a morally-minded one.
The author was passionate about Panchayati Raj, as MK Gandhi visualised it, and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (Mani’s friend and first leader) sought to give the dream shape. As minister, Mani was deeply invested. He draws our attention to the intellectual difference between Gandhi and BR Ambedkar on the significance (or otherwise) of treating the village as the first unit of democracy building up to the national Parliament. (Ambedkar thought Indian villages were “sinks of ignorance”.)
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Mani rightly figured that our Constitutional scheme — with its prescribed division of fiscal powers between the Centre and the states — couldn’t give the notion of making the village the first functioning step of democracy — with devolved financial authority— real life.
He takes solace from the fact that Rajiv Gandhi’s scheme and its enactment found institutionalisation when a new portfolio of Panchayati Raj was especially created in recognition of Mani’s passionate espousal, courtesy then Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s subtle intervention. But this was surely the rubric being institutionalised, not the spirit of the thing.
As Sports and Youth Affairs Minister
As Petroleum minister also, Mani sought to wear seven league boots, although he only held temporary charge, but was eventually stymied in his efforts as the Americans looked to clearing the way for selling a power reactor to India once the Manmohan government cleared the civil nuclear agreement in the teeth of political opposition from the Left allies and a part of the ruling Congress itself. At any rate, the chapters on the author’s tenure as cabinet minister for Panchayati Raj and Petroleum deserve special mention, and can be read with profit by anyone keen to understand these subjects.
But as minister for Sports and Youth Affairs, Mani came a cropper. He was peeved for being dropped from Petroleum and himself sought to make things difficult and complicated for the government. He need not have. He could have resigned since he felt there was corruption and inefficiency but did not — and does not say why. In the process he earned Sonia Gandhi’s displeasure as he went public on certain matters, letting the side down.
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A word about this since Mani has made much of being a “maverick in politics”. Was he one really if he expended so much energy in trying repeatedly to get the Congress nomination (“the ticket”) to contest the Lok Sabha election — and once contested even as an independent candidate — and did all the pushing and shoving and pleading the bloody game calls for in our pretty murky system?
Rajiv Gandhi’s prophetic words
A maverick ought to be unconventional and independent-minded even at the risk of incurring pain. To attain his objective, Mani at times chose to want to please the bosses, quite needlessly, and his wife sometimes pointed this out. But to be fair to the lead player in the story told in these pages, Mani does not hesitate to narrate the events truthfully even when he might be cast in unflattering light. That is a strong point of the man.
He was warned by Rajiv Gandhi that our political system will not let someone like him succeed, and this has turned out to be prophetic, as the author acknowledges. His telling of the story brings out what’s arguably the most significant aspect of the book — the relationship of the party, the Manmohan Singh government, and individual leaders, including the author of the book — with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul. (Priyanka at the time was officially not in the party.) This does not happen in a single chapter or unit of the book but is unobtrusively spread almost right through. It is for the reader to pull it all together.
The Gandhis dealt with Mani in a way that would have hurt. Although they held him in affection, they didn’t see him for years together. Would they have conducted the political relationship with Rajiv Gandhi’s friend in the same manner if he had a political base of his own? Naturally, that question cannot be answered.
Nevertheless, the book is well worth a read to understand, if only partially, the way the Congress runs with the Gandhis at the helm. Such an effort has not been made before. The author evidently wrote spontaneously and quickly. The editors and publishers could have organised the material somewhat differently, and more comprehensively. A tighter product could have given the manuscript greater value.
