| The frameworks within which they operate are different, the demands of the job are not comparable, and the consequences of success and failure are of course on different planes. |
| Nevertheless, when a civil servant becomes a politician, you do expect some of the old habits and values (nurtured in structured environments with rules) to survive in a world where there are few rules other than the oldest one of them all: don't get caught. Else, why talk of a moral compass? |
| With the first election campaign that he fought, Mani Shankar Aiyar realised that politics is a merciless business far removed from writing newspaper columns or schmoozing with diplomatic privilege in Karachi. The factors that separate all-important victory from career-threatening defeat are not what an idealised definition of representative democracy would spell out. The Election Commission's rules are for the birds. Servicing the constituency is less important than hard-nosed political alignments. And your notions of development may be on a different planet from your voters'. |
| The change that these trials by fire can bring in a person was reflected in Mr Aiyar's choosing to set up home in Sainik Farms, the symbol of the Delhi elite's contempt for rules, norms and laws. |
| Still, Mr Aiyar began well as a first-time minister. However much one may disagree with his worldview and his socialist preferences, he brought fresh energy and a larger vision to the petroleum ministry (little has been heard in recent times of his other charge, panchayati raj). |
| He deployed his diplomatic skills to seek energy security, he focused on immediate as well as longer-term structural issues, and everything was very public-spirited and high-minded. |
| The results after 16 months, unfortunately, are not much to write home about because few contracts have been won overseas, and his preference for government control of oil pricing has only demolished the finances of the very public sector companies that he seeks to strengthen. |
| Also, it is hard to find people in the public sector oil companies who speak well of the minister; whatever he is doing, he is not winning friends. |
| But even after recognising all this, Mr Aiyar's choice of candidates for the boards of some of the country's largest public sector companies is a shock. |
| Here is a minister who is not lacking in intelligence""so he must know that the uninspiring politicians picked by him from the Congress fold will add nothing to the oversight of the companies concerned, be of no help to their managements, and play little role in improving governance standards. |
| No rational person seeking to strengthen the public sector will prefer a Seva Dal stalwart to professors of management, globally recognised business consultants and seasoned bureaucrats with domain knowledge. It also takes little to imagine what the provocative and endlessly witty Mr Aiyar's comments might have been at the time when Pramod Mahajan named a young lady to the board of one of the public sector telecom giants, though that seems to serve now as the justifying precedent. |
| In any case, has he worked out what might happen when the Congress next yields power to the BJP? Will all his directors be replaced by RSS volunteers? Is that how Mr Aiyar proposes to strengthen his beloved public sector? |
| In other words, has Mr Aiyar, Cambridge-educated and schooled in the values of the civil service, metamorphosed into nothing more than an old-style politician who sees control of turf and opportunity for pork-barrel politics as the real reasons for occupying office, and for whom the virtues of the public sector are more private than public? |
| Who will, for instance, locate a public sector entity in an entirely inappropriate area because his party chief wants to develop a constituency? |
| In other words, has Mr Aiyar made the transition from rule-observant civil servant to rule-disregarding politician? Or is the question itself naïve and irrelevant? |
Top Section
Explore Business Standard