When AK Antony was appointed as the country’s defence minister, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh commented to a colleague in a flash of dry humour: “The finance minister should be happy. Now the defence ministry won’t spend a single rupee and the finance ministry will save lots of money.”
Known variously as St Antony and Mr Clean, this much is true: Although Antony has said time and again that procurement policies must demonstrate a positive bias in favour of Indian industry, defence purchases are down to a trickle and what little is being bought is through the government-to-government foreign military sales (FMS) route rather than directly from private sector arms manufacturers. That way, Antony manages to avoid controversy, although, typically, FMS is more expensive than direct negotiation and helps the private sector defence industry in the other countries country (mostly the US) rather than the Indian industry. It also sometimes creates piquant situations. There is the curious case of ultra-light howitzer, for instance: Only two firms in the world make the gun. The one that is Singapore-based is being pushed into a specious CBI enquiry and when the Army starts making a noise about shortages, the FMS route will be taken, with the order falling in the lap of its British/American rival. No one comments on the fairness or otherwise of this decision. But, at least there are no arms dealers lurking here, and Antony actually buys something with his reputation intact.
Here’s the thing: With his credibility and reputation for probity, modernisation plans for the three services could have moved much faster. But because of his reputation for integrity, Antony has chosen to be a bad administrator rather than being a good one. If you’re the sort who judges a book by its cover, you would ask yourself: What has India done to deserve such a loser as a defence minister? Antony has about as much charisma as a tortoise; he is not a particularly good speaker and if he has a personality, it doesn’t impress.
But nothing that he has done in his political life owes to his personality. It is just his work. He has almost never lost an election. He is the only person in Kerala who can stand from around 100 of Kerala’s 140 constituencies and be assured of a victory: He’s proved it in Cherthala, his hometown, which he didn’t visit for a quarter of a century after making his debut from there in the assembly in 1971. Then, he returned there for the 1996 Assembly elections, managing to defeat his Left front rival CK Chandrappan by a healthy margin proving all his critics utterly wrong.
So what gives Antony acceptability? Antony’s politics is always — and only — about doing the right thing.
When he became the chief minister of Kerala in 1996, he banned the sale and production of arrack (country liquor), stupefying voters. Not content with this, he opted to take a huge revenue hit but trebled the rates of excise on indian made foreign liquor (IMFL). Because arrack is a source of livelihood for thousands of families, the Left Front came out on the streets to demonstrate against him. The Congress party begged him to reverse the decision. He didn’t budge. This won him the eternal support of women and the church — the same bishops opposed him bitterly in 1974 for his stand that all church-(especially Catholic church) owned educational institutions should be nationalised as the state pays a major share of their expenses. After the arrack prohibition decision, Antony — who incidentally turned agnostic when he was very young, not an easy decision in the politics of religion in Kerala — was in an equable mood over this sudden enthusiasm of the church for his policies and advised the bishops that teetotalism was the right thing to do and that they should set an example by not drinking wine and suchlike in public.
Antony owns no property. His family lives in a tiny house bought by his wife. Kerala’s museums are full of mementos he’s donated to them — because they were presented, not to him but to the chief minister of Kerala. Today, if Congress President Sonia Gandhi is confused about a political decision, she will always ask the protagonists: “have you discussed this with Antonyji?”
But Antony loves power. There has been no occasion when he has refused to accept a post in either the party or the government. He recently said he would never return to Kerala politics. That can only mean his next job will be the President of India.
