 "Smriti Irani")
Sometime in early 2000, a young woman caught the attention of Ekta Kapoor, the creative director of Balaji Telefilms. The woman, Smriti Irani, was a struggling model, had been one of the Miss India finalists two years earlier and by no stretch of imagination did she fit the image of the conventional bahu that thousands of Indian parents seek for their sons. But Kapoor’s mind was made up. Irani would be the Tulsi of her new serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Not only did Irani make it to the show — without an audition— the show also revolved entirely around her.
Fourteen years later, history has repeated itself. Only this time it has played out not on television but in politics. Irani, considered until recently a political lightweight with practically no mass base, is suddenly the Union minister for human resource development. At 38, she is the youngest member of the Narendra Modi cabinet.
Irani learnt early in life the importance of aligning with the powers that be. In December 2004, she thundered against Modi, threatening to go on a “fast unto death” if he did not resign over the Gujarat riots. But that very night, after a sharp rap from her party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, she withdrew her remarks “unconditionally”. Modi is not known to forget or forgive easily. Irani has been a rare exception. Not only has he forgiven her, he has called her his chhoti behen at every possible opportunity. The patch-up between the two took place in February 2005, at a dinner hosted at BJP veteran L K Advani’s house. In front of television cameras, Modi dramatically placed his hand on her head and called her “Gujarat ki beti”. From then on, she has only gone from strength to strength.
She has an uncanny ability to spot the right mentors. Under Pramod Mahajan, she became the president of BJP’s youth wing in Maharashtra in 2001. Here on, she was appointed president of BJP Mahila Morcha, then BJP’s national vice-president in 2013 and political in-charge of the party in Goa before bagging a Rajya Sabha ticket from Modi’s Gujarat, overtaking several long-standing political workers. As the HRD minister, one of the first things she did was get the blessings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which had questioned her appointment, at its headquarters in Nagpur.
It would, however, be unfair to attribute Irani’s success solely to her being at the right place at the right time with the right people. Perhaps that instinct comes from long years of struggle. Irani comes from a middle income family — Bengali mother, Punjabi father and two sisters — from Delhi. Her father had a courier business. As a child, Irani was reticent and low-profile. The transformation happened at 16. She started acting in plays and then dropped out of college and decided to opt for a graduation course through correspondence. At 22, she was shortlisted for the Miss India contest, Irani borrowed Rs 2 lakh from her father and landed at designer Manish Malhotra’s studio to get her outfit designed. “I remember her as a warm, spirited young woman, focused and driven,” says Malhotra.
She didn’t win the pageant and was straddled with a loan. Desperate but irrepressible, she took up a job at McDonalds in Bandra, serving burgers and cleaning floors and tables. Briefly she also sold cosmetics at Delhi’s popular flea market, Janpath. She struggled. She learnt. Until one day, Ekta Kapoor spotted her. Her transformation into the iconic bahu, Tulsi Virani, taught her the importance of image. And not for a moment has she let go of it.
She turns up in Parliament in a prominent red bindi on her forehead and vermillion in her hair, her sari firmly held in place with the BJP’s lotus brooch. The image was also in display as she took on Congress stalwart Kapil Sibal when she contested the Lok Sabha elections against him from old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk 10 years ago. The slogan of “Ghar ghar ki rani, Tulsi Virani” followed her everywhere. She lost the election, but was unscathed. “You will definitely see more of me now,” she said back then.
A decade later, life has come full circle. Irani, whose academic qualifications have been a matter of much debate, now heads the ministry which was, until recently, under Sibal. Back in 2004, she had hardly any political bigwigs campaigning for her. Her companion then was her husband, Zubin Irani, her childhood friend whom she married in 2001. They have two children and Irani is also the mother to Zubin’s daughter from his earlier marriage. “In the long term, politics will be her career. She has great energy and can carry on for hours,” her husband had said in 2004.
This was evident during her campaign in Amethi earlier this year, “In 37 days, she visited more than 1,200 of the 1,617 booths. Within that short span she knew the names of thousands of BJP workers,” says BJP’s Amethi media in-charge and her campaign manager, Govind Singh Chauhan. To BJP workers in Amethi she is ‘didi’ (sister). Rahul Gandhi, incidentally, is ‘bhaiyya’ (brother) to Congress workers. Once a worker addressed her as ‘Madam’ and she shot back, “’Madam’ is Sonia Gandhi. I am your ‘didi’.”
In Delhi, in the C Wing of Shastri Bhavan that houses the HRD ministry, she is the domineering Tulsi. “A control freak,” is how a fellow BJP leader describes her. Under Irani, HRD is now a highly controlled ministry. The staff is learning to read her expressions — a smile is not a smile; it’s a warning unless it reaches her eyes. A BJP worker, for example, was once admonished by her at Ahmedabad airport in fluent Gujarati when he tried to help her with her luggage. “Tamne khabar chhe, hu maro luggage jatech upadu choo (You know I like to carry my personal luggage myself),” she told him. Humour is not her strength. She tried to do a comic role in a soap called Maniben.com but the audience didn’t take to it.
In her 90 days as minister, Irani, once BJP’s voice in the media, has not held a single press conference — not even when the controversy around Delhi University’s Four-Year Undergraduate Programme snowballed. Once when an invite did go out to the media for the release of annual statistical report of the District Information System for Education, the Press Information Bureau hastily issued another message, “Not open to the media” and said the invite was a “clerical error”. Days after she took over, a group of journalists had landed in her room on the second floor of Shastri Bhavan to meet her. She was livid. Journalists who have met her informally have had to leave not just their cellphones, but also their pens and notebooks outside the room.
During DU’s four-year course fracas, Irani maintained she would not interfere in the matter and that the University Grants Commission (UGC) would call the shots. But a frequent visitor to Shastri Bhavan during that week was UGC Chairperson Ved Prakash. The commission was clearly taking and vetting its cues from the ministry. Irani was also meeting DU Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh in those days.
Irani once said she would like to keep appearing in new roles. So far, she has succeeded. The end of this year will find the minister in yet another role — as Asin’s mother in her first Bollywood film, All Is Well, also starring Abhishek Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor.
