LUNCH WITH BS: Prithviraj Chavan

Sound versus action

Prithviraj Chavan

The PMO's minister of state bemoans the constant fire-fighting without meaningful progress in critical areas of governance.

These days, Prithviraj Chavan keeps a suitcase ready and packed at all times. He never knows when he might have to travel. The government needed to send a minister to check the rehabilitation work by the Narmada Control Authority. Off went Chavan, as the prime minister's man on the spot. As a design engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, Chavan had to make no extra effort to understand the engineering issues involved in raising the height of the dam "" the human problem of forced resettlement doesn't require academic qualifications, he confessed ruefully, as he learnt when oustees nearly man-handled the ministers' team that went to Madhya Pradesh ten days ago. Days before that, he was asked to accompany President APJ Abdul Kalam to Abu Dhabi to attend the funeral of the Amir of United Arab Emirates. And if it is Saturday, it has to be Karad, in Satara, Maharashtra, his constituency and home, writes Business Standard.

Being minister of state in this Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is different because this PMO is different, I suggest to him. Under Rajiv Gandhi, it was a baba-log PMO (with the exception of Sarla Grewal). The principal secretary to the PM defined the PMO under P V Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

But under Manmohan Singh, the principal secretary is so low profile as to be almost invisible. The PMO doesn't spend as much time in framing policy as it does making sure it is implemented. "You're fire-fighting all the time. No two days are the same," agrees Chavan over lunch at Delhi's Gymkhana Club. "A lot of initiatives are possible in this job. So you need to spend time nurturing and blessing new ideas."

He explains that with the PMO driving institutions as diverse as the Knowledge Commission, advisory bodies on the domestic and foreign aspects of the Indian economy, and the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme, his workload changes every day. "One moment it is the Bamboo Mission. The next, I find I'm handling files on the implication of doubling agriculture credit in three years. This, I realise, will add one crore new families to the market economy. How could this impact India? It is my job to study this and add my bit to the considerable research that has already been done to visualise the schemes," he explains.

Chavan doesn't waste time describing the wonderful work the government is doing. Instead, he is refreshingly self-critical. "Reforms are not making any major headway. We're tinkering with things. We should have had legal reforms in place that would, for instance, have addressed the issues raised by the killing of Jessica Lal. Similarly, nothing needs reform more than laws governing land and property rights. There is no regulator for energy, transport, mining, atomic energy... When you open up the economy without a regulator, it is an open invitation to corruption" he says.

Gymkhana Club's strength is its gracious, perfectly proportioned building. The food and service are not the club's strong points. We help ourselves to an Indian buffet, the only meal available on a Saturday afternoon and sit around a table, the table cloth of which is not too clean. Chavan confesses that he has only recently become a member of the club where the waiting list extends to 2020. I told him that tea and toast by the fire on winter evenings is the only reason one should be a member of Gymkhana Club. That, and the pleasure of swimming in a pool that is called the Lady Willingdon Swimming Bath (1936).

I ask Chavan if he regrets returning to India from California, where he spent more than ten years, studying and working in the aerospace industry. Becoming an NRI was never an option, he explains. Both his parents were politicians, his father a minister in Nehru's Cabinet. He lost his father within months of returning to India and his mother contested from Karad. Chavan, who was at the time working on developing an Indian language computer, came into contact with Rajiv Gandhi. In 1991, when his mother decided to retire, he was asked to contest the Lok Sabha election to Karad. He has had three terms in the Lok Sabha and is currently a member of the Rajya Sabha.

I ask him how he viewed politics in Maharashtra. "The inherent strength of Maharashtra was its socialist movement. The state had an enlightened polity, tenancy reforms were undertaken in 1957, it has a full-fledged Panchayat Raj system and it was the first state to have an Employment Guarantees Scheme in place. The monopoly purchase of cotton was a revolutionary concept" he says.

Co-operatives were a part of the socialist legacy of Maharashtra but as business became bigger, the nature of co-operatives got distorted. "Though co-operatives had money, the deputy secretary in the government was still more powerful than they were. They realised they had to control politics as well. Soon, it was the chief minister who was managing not just the co-operative but also the economy of the state," he says.

"The need for a movement, struggle "" all that ended. Anyone who controlled a co-operative controlled a region. To be the CM, you needed to have co-operatives with you. That is Sharad Pawar's strength," he says, without bitterness, for he is the victim of the ultimate irony "" in the 2004 election, his seat, represented for years by his family, fell in the kitty of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP.

We virtually finish lunch without really noticing what were eating. I suggest tea "" served in a proper service, none of the tea-bag rubbish and repair to an alcove by the ballroom. What did he think of the Narmada dam controversy? "It is debate between very poor people and very rich people," he says cryptically. "I wish we were a proper democracy" says Chavan. "Here, it is just voting. But democracy means a lot more than that".