A Maverick in Politics: Profound, truthful, and no-holds-barred like Aiyar

A MAVERICK IN POLITICS: 1999-2024  Author: Mani Shankar Aiyar  Publisher: Juggernaut  Pages: 410  Price: Rs 899  Mani-Talk, the signed column that Mani Shankar Aiyar used to write from 1989 to 1999, was one of the most popular columns in Sunday  magazine, the publication I had the honour and privilege of being associated with for more than five years. Many references to Mani-Talk in the second volume of his biography were gratifying and brought it all back, especially Aiyar’s despairing wail when it was suggested gently to him that columns were more effective when they were short and pithy. “But it takes me 500 words just to clear my throat,” he said helplessly. This book is Mani-Talk 10X: witty, rapier-sharp, sparing no one, not even himself.

 

The first volume ended when he turned 50, resigned from the Indian Foreign Service and joined politics. From this book we learn of the trials and tribulations of an MP who wants, in all sincerity, to junk caste and class and just “develop” his constituency. He contested Mayiladuthurai — the name means the bank of the Cauvery where Siva danced as a peacock — but found it hard to manage both the supply side and the demand side of an MP’s responsibilities. He got a TV relay station set up in the constituency, organised many high-profile visits, (including by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as prime minister) and tried to get businessmen with deep pockets (or so he thought) to invest in a variety of businesses including food processing, an IT centre and an oil refinery to turn  Mayiladuthurai into an Indian Dubai, a rash promise to begin with, that led to much chortling later. Few of the projects actually panned out. But failures notwithstanding, Aiyar must have done something right because the same constituency elected him thrice. His brief tenure in the Trinamool Congress, seeing no future in the Congress under Sitaram Kesri, led to his expulsion. He returned when Gandhi took over the party. The book recalls “the glare bestowed on me by an alarmed Jairam Ramesh who perceived me as the principal roadblock on his path to prominence” at his meeting with Gandhi. He adds with quiet satisfaction: “Soniaji asked me to rewrite Jairam’s first draft for her acceptance speech at AICC…she delivered my version, almost unchanged” 

The book stands out for its account of the inside track after he was made minister for the first time in 2004. He got panchayati raj, culture and tribal affairs portfolios with “temporary” charge of petroleum and natural gas. The book describes Aiyar’s education in oil and gas politics – and public sector unit politics. He lasted 20 months in the ministry, leveraging his experience in diplomacy and natural good sense. In Vienna for an OPEC meeting, Saudi Arabia hosted a dinner for the Indian delegation – and went vegetarian because the entire Indian delegation was vegetarian. Aiyar threw a cracker in the midst of the meeting with customary panache: not only did he speak of an Asian premium that entailed Asian importers of oil paying higher prices because of outdated market practices, but also an Asian oil grid or an “Asian Energy Identity”. A beginning could be made by extending the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline to India (TAPI). Like many other projects, this idea stayed in the files after he left the ministry, though Afghanistan is now signalling it would like TAPI to be revived. 

As petroleum minister, Aiyar details his brushes with his old stomping grounds, the ministry of external affairs, especially on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline. The story he tells is revealing, including a reference to pressure from the US that offered Delhi a civil nuclear deal – provided India called off negotiations on IPI. Washington needn’t have bothered. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked him to go slow on IPI because of financing costs and technological problems. Aiyar does not expand: but apparently domestic lobbies were at work as well because he was divested of the portfolio soon after, with Sonia Gandhi reminding him that the charge had been “temporary” and asking him why he had been telling people he had been asked to go because he could not raise money for the party – implying his successor, Murli Deora, had this gift. He also describes differences between Subir Raha, chairman of ONGC, and his ministry, and concedes Raha might have been right in being conservative about parameters used in judging PSU performance in oil and gas exploration. 

Freed of the responsibility of oil diplomacy (he doesn’t say so, but he really seemed to have enjoyed his time there and mourned his exit), Aiyar describes his other charge: panchayati raj, where he earned the ire of erstwhile ally Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) by his move to bypass state governments in running panchayati raj institutions, something the DMK was sensitive about. He was given charge of sports and youth affairs in lieu of petroleum. The 2010 Commonwealth Games were months away. And he was having a running battle with Suresh Kalmadi, the chief of the Organising Committee of the CWG as bad odours wafted out of the OC about misuse of government money. He told Kalmadi: “Suresh, I have no desire to share a cell with you in Tihar jail, nor do I wish to bring you chocolate cake in prison.” 

The Commonwealth Games and the India Against Corruption campaign put paid to the Congress in 2014. Aiyar says he was fading out. But he can put a precise date to his fall:  December 7, 2017, when in an interview he described Narendra Modi as a  “neech kism ka aadmi”  for the rhetoric he was using. His party and the Bharatiya Janata Party alike turned on him. Aiyar says he never used the word as a casteist slur. But he was suspended from the party. Arun Jaitley of the BJP called it a “strategic suspension”. 

Time passed and that suspension was revoked. But Aiyar’s generation had passed and younger people in the party were champing at the bit. He describes his last battle to become the Congress candidate from Mayiladuthurai in 2024. It was not to be. 

This book is profound, truthful, entertaining and defiantly no-holds barred. Exactly like Mani Shankar Aiyar himself.