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Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

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The big four

The personality, ambitions, attitudes and angularities of the Home, Defence, Finance and External Affairs Ministers can make or mar a Prime Minister's leadership profile.

Natwar Singh, P. Chidambaram, Shivraj Patil & Pranab Mukherjee

WHEN A Prime Minister drives up Raisina Hill on way to work, he or she cannot possibly help wondering about his four senior-most colleagues who occupy the two imposing structures on either side of the hillock. The two monumental buildings — North Block and South Block — house the crucial Ministries of Home, Finance, Defence, and External Affairs, with the Prime Minister's Office in the corner-end of South Block. These four Ministers, their personalities, ambitions, attitudes and angularities can make or mar a Prime Minister's political and administrative leadership profile.

It was perhaps the unhappiest aspect of the Vajpayee Government that there always was this cold war — which often became considerably hot — between South Block (read the Prime Minister's Office) and North Block (L.K. Advani's Home Ministry).

The more the two principals professed to be the best of friends, colleagues and soul-mates, the more the officers discerned deepening differences. For most of these six years, this North-South divide defined as well as hobbled the Vajpayee Government's approach to Pakistan, Kashmir and other related matters.

Then, again, the Prime Minister was saddled with a Defence Minister whose antinomian political persona continued to make demands on the Government's collective personality, rendering it morally debilitated; it was, for instance, George Fernandes' entirely needless and eminently avoidable showdown with the then Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, that made the Vajpayee regime play on the back-foot the next five years against the uniformed brass.

Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister has bagged a competent foursome. Pranab Mukherjee at Defence, Natwar Singh in the Foreign Office, Shivraj Patil at Home, and P. Chidambaram presiding over Finance make a coherent team. All the four are quintessential Congressmen by temperament and political experience.

What is more, all four of them owe their new jobs to one person, the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. Unlike Mr. Advani or Mr. Fernandes or even Jaswant Singh, none of the new Big Four can afford to become too big for his boots.

Mr. Mukherjee can technically claim, as he does often in private, to be "senior" to Dr. Singh; as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in the early 1980s, Dr. Singh used to "report" to Mr. Mukherjee who, at that time, was Finance Minister in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet.

Also, Mr. Mukherjee once entertained prime ministerial ambitions and when he opted to contest, for the first time, a Lok Sabha poll, there were many who thought of him as a viable prime ministerial candidate. He was probably unhappy that he was not the choice when Ms. Gandhi opted to step away from the prime ministerial sweepstakes. But apart from being unhappy, there is very little Mr. Mukherjee can do about it.

After all, Mr. Mukherjee is no L.K. Advani (or George Fernandes), who selected himself for the job. He has no political constituency of his own, except perhaps in a section of the corporate sector. He is respected in the Congress for his managerial "experience" and he is senior enough to address the new Prime Minister (in private) as "Monmouhn" but no one is under any illusion that he is a "party boss" or a leader in his own right.

Nonetheless, he is not going to be a mealy-mouthed Minister, as his Cabinet colleagues have already discovered; by sheer administrative experience, by his capacity for painstaking homework, and by his intellectual capacity to think through issues, Mr. Mukherjee is going to be an important, useful and supportive colleague of the new Prime Minister.

Mr. Patil at the Home Ministry is no Advani either. Mr. Patil owes his assignment as the Home Minister entirely to Ms. Gandhi who came to respect him for his sobriety and seriousness during the 13th Lok Sabha when he was the Deputy Leader to her in the House.

Since this prestigious assignment has come his way after he lost the Lok Sabha elections, he has no reason or inclination to assume any prima donnish airs.

As Home Minister, he is a statutory member of the most powerful panel, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet; in that capacity, he will not be tempted to carve out a following for himself among the officers, nor can he be suspected of wanting to lay bureaucratic landmines for the Prime Minister.

In other words, Mr. Patil will be a perfect team player, respectful towards the Prime Minister and yet appropriately sensitive to the demands of 10 Janpath.

As Finance Minister, Mr. Chidambaram can be said to be spiritually closest to Dr. Singh. The two worked together during the Narasimha Rao era when they put in place the post-1991 "economic reforms" regime. It is his competence and experience that will help him define his job.

He is technically once again a member of the Congress, after a gap of eight years, but he got the job only because both the Prime Minister and the Congress president wanted him to be part of the Big Four. At the same time, he cannot be said to enjoy vast respect and admiration among the Congressmen. Still, those who have interacted with him in recent weeks find him a much-mellowed man and this new mood should have him enhance his efficacy by endearing himself once again to the party.

The last of the Big Four, Natwar Singh, is in a class by himself. A year ago, when the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, came to India (wanting New Delhi to commit troops for Iraq), he paid the obligatory call on Ms. Gandhi, then Leader of the Opposition. Dr. Singh and Mr. Singh were assisting her, as usual.

With characteristic American bluntness, Gen. Powell asked Ms. Gandhi what the Congress' top priority in the next 12 months was; and, with characteristic nonchalance, Mr. Singh intervened to reply: "To install Mrs. Gandhi as the Prime Minister in place of Mr. Vajpayee."

Though like Mr. Mukherjee, he too is senior enough to call the Prime Minister (again, in private) by his first name, he will be respectful and deferential to Dr. Singh.

All this means Dr. Singh can hope to generate that essential but often elusive chemistry that a Prime Minister must have with his senior colleagues. No Prime Minister in recent years has begun his odyssey on such a cooperative note as has Dr. Singh.

H.K

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