Trading on reputation

Plain Politics

After four years in power, Arun Jaitley is still among the government's brightest stars

Of all the elements of the Sangh Parivar, it is the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) whose stars are in the ascendence today.

Look around you. BJP President Venkiah Naidu's baptism in Hindutva took place via the ABVP. Ravishankar Prasad, Vijay Goel, Ananth Kumar, Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Bal Apte, Pramod Mahajan... they all began their Hindutva career from the ABVP.

Madandas Devi began with the RSS and became coordinator between the RSS and the ABVP, rather like Govindacharya. The others may be a little senior or junior to each other but their socialisation is the same.

Student politics leaves its own stamp on your political personality. It makes you slightly zany. Madandas Devi's shifting as the coordinator between the RSS and the BJP two years ago highlighted a change in the style of politics in the BJP.

While core ABVP beliefs are naturally rooted in the RSS credo of mandir, secularism (that is pseudo-secularism), the persecuted Hindu, etc, student politics demands flexibility and a more educated view of the world. A lot like trade union activity, it teaches you that no one can and should be a political untouchable.

So no one asked Arun Jaitley for any explanations when he hosted a quiet dinner for Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh last year.

Otherwise regarded by the RSS with some distaste for his open espousal of Muslim rights, there were no murmurs of protest that Arun Jaitley was consorting with the enemy.

When Jaitley took the legal brief for NDTV (while it was still in the Star stable) no Swadeshi Jagaran Manch member threatened to disown him. Jaitley made it plain that he was not going to stop going out to eat at McDonald's with his family, nor was he suddenly going to turn vegetarian.

There was no real protest from anyone in the Sangh. (However, clearly, there are limits to liberalism. He did help in drafting the Ban on Cow Slaughter Bill super-quickly. The bill failed for other reasons, but even a liberal like Jaitley draws a line at eating beef.)

And when he went to Cancun to fight on India's behalf, more RSS leaders backed him than they did Rajnath Singh who, somewhat publicly, was fighting him on the issue of India's position on agriculture in the WTO.

This is as much a result of starting out with the ABVP "" which allows a measure of freedom "" as a function of being Arun Jaitley.

Why is Arun Jaitley so important in the current context ? Because he is so versatile. Because of his St Xavier's schooling, a highly successful legal practice and his ease with the spoken word, he is heard with respect, especially in carpeted drawing rooms and homes that have more than one television and one car.

Defending Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi after the riots would have been difficult for any liberal. But Jaitley spoke up for him at every forum, helping him map every political move post-riots, at considerable personal political risk.

Apart from enlightened self interest (he is elected to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat and can hardly let the CM down), this was part of a calculated political strategy to help saffronise a certain class of people that believes Nehru was right in protecting the minorities but is genuinely bewildered at events like Godhra and Akshardham.

After the breach between business and government following the riots, it was he who used his proximity to Modi to pave over some of the fissures.

In other words, he understands the needs of a certain constituency that the BJP desperately wants to address and co-opt His training in business and later as a lawyer helps him grasp knotty issues quickly.

Prior to the import-export policy, he heard the CII in a rather "grumpy" (their word) silence as they explained what they wanted from the policy.

They were delighted when the policy reflected 80 per cent of the suggestions made by them. He is a member of virtually every Group of Ministers (GoM) set up in government, matching Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K C Pant, GoM for GoM.

Jaitley has a reputation for being straitlaced in financial matters, an attribute that greatly endears him to business.

"He is not moral about law in the sense that say, Fali Nariman is. But money is not terribly relevant to him. You have to convert him through argument, not money" said a businessman.

Sounds insufferable? He would have been if it hadn't been for a sense of humour and a talent for mimicry. He calls the Congress nothing more than a crowd around a family and says for the Gandhi family, India is family business.

So where is Jaitley going to be in 2009? His competitors are people as talented as him in the BJP "" Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan, maybe even Narendra Modi.

Unlike Modi, Swaraj and Mahajan, Jaitley has no specific constituency. As minister in charge of Madhya Pradesh, he is currently spending every available weekend in Bhopal coordinating with Uma Bharati to re-enthrone a BJP government in the state.

Because he is deeply involved in the party now, he is constituency-building in the party as well. He's clearly finance minister material in a party where few people understand economics. But the top job? The jury is still out.

A young, awed interviewer described him thus: "He's sharp, he's sassy, he's sleek, he's suave, he's very camera-friendly, and he's packed with punch-lines. In short, all the stuff that good VJs are made of. Question is (sic), can he make the music?"