BJP's blunt voice no more

OBITUARY: Pramod Mahajan

When a weekly put Pramod Mahajan on its cover and called him 'Mr Fixer', Mahajan, instead of slapping a legal notice on the magazine, telephoned the editor to say thank you.

"I can't say that article is going to be particularly helpful when I arrange my daughter's marriage", he said, "but it is worth more to me than a Rs 10 lakh contribution by some industrialist. One must be written about, good or bad. Publicity always helps."

That was the Mahajan way. He was blunt, outspoken and unapologetic. He thrived on drama, the last act and scene of which is now over. He is no more.

Mahajan saw the best of times and the worst of times. He was the Defence minister in the 13-day BJP-led government in 1996, but became political advisor to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during his 13-month term which ended in 1999. That job too slipped out of his hands when, just after India's nuclear tests, he told TV cameras nonchalantly about China: "Ulta chor kotwal ko dante (Thief reprimanding the policeman)!?"

During Vajpayee's third stint as PM, as Information and then Information Technology minister, he had only a small run-in "" on account of Media Lab Asia.

As Information minister, Mahajan saw in DTH, liberation from the stranglehold of the cable industry and actively worked to set up a DTH network for Doordarshan. As Information Technology minister, he vigorously pushed the IT Act in 2000. This made India a part of the digital dozen of the world - the countries giving legal sanction to e-commerce and e-governance.

It was as Telecom minister that his role was most controversial. One of the topmost bureaucrats in the country said about him that other ministers in the government had merely made money "" Mahajan had damaged bureaucratic institutions.

But it is also true that Mahajan understood nuances of telecom policy and technology intimately. With him as minister, the poor man's cellphone "" the limited mobility telephony launched by a handful of operators "" was morphed into full-fledged mobile telephony. He was pilloried for favouring some business houses, but he pushed ahead with important policy changes.

Mahajan was also a highly successful Parliamentary Affairs minister responsible for the dilution and subsequent passage of the controversial Prevention Of Terrorism Act (POTA) that was promulgated as an ordinance by the NDA government.

Not bad for an impoverished English teacher from Ambejogai in Maharashtra.

The party will miss him the most in Maharashtra, especially now when the BJP has to choose between the Balasaheb-led Shiv Sena and the new set-up headed by his clever nephew Raj. It is hard to run a coalition, harder still when the adversary is Sharad Pawar. Now, with fundamental changes in both the Shiv Sena and the BJP, the whole alliance will have to be reworked afresh.

When the BJP went out of power at the Centre, inevitably Mahajan got a large part of the blame "" it was his hitech campaign that cost the party power, his critics said. In India, where people can't afford two square meals, was it necessary to run an election campaign that involved telephone messages from the PM? But, Mahajan was obsessive about efficiency and to him this was a wonderfully efficient, low cost way to delivering his leader's message.

Having lost the instincts of being in the Opposition, the opposition within the BJP became the dominant strain in the party. When Venkiah Naidu became party president and made him General Secretary, Mahajan was subdued but retained his sense of irony. "You can call it back to square one, if you want," he said when asked whether it was embarrassing for him to take up the job he had left five years ago.

There were many unsavoury controversies about his personal life. But for a highly intelligent man who enjoyed power and wielded it with elan, possibly controversy was inevitable.

In fact, Mahajan was a reserved with those whom he didn't know and unbelievably generous to those he did.

He will be badly missed for his organisational and negotiating skills.