Why doesn’t Maneka Gandhi realise the virtue of the art of subtlety

Morarji Desai was blunt to the point of rudeness, though his acerbic tone was often put down to his age. P Chidambaram made it clear that he did not suffer fools gladly. Frequently, these were people who didn’t agree with him on one or other issue. Desai was cutting, Chidambaram could crush you. But they never felt the need to be abusive.

When Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee telephoned Maneka Gandhi to inform her that he was taking the culture portfolio away from her, he told her why he was doing so as well. Gandhi, it seems, had had words with members of the board of the Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts (IGNCA).

One of them, the venerable and respected former editor of Navbharat Times, Vidyaniwas Mishra, is also a personal friend of the PM’s. Vajpayee is reported to have told Gandhi that she really shouldn’t have been disrespectful towards Mishra. (At the last meeting of the IGNCA board on November 18, Gandhi is supposed to have charged the board with squandering government money and is said to have referred to Vidyaniwas Mishra as a “stupid” man.)

However, according to Maneka, the Mishra with whom she had a grouse was not Vidyaniwas but another one. There hangs a story.

Apparently a racket has been operating in the culture ministry for years. This involves prizes for books that the ministry gives from time to time. Both at the central and the state level, cash awards are given for prize-winning books. No one goes too deeply into the contents — so, sometimes these could be books written 20 years ago that have been “re-issued” with a new preface, intro, or minor changes. These books then get awards with prize money ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 1 lakh, along with the attendant prestige of a state award.

Apparently Gandhi stumbled upon this, ordered an inquiry and was livid when a list of such awardees was discovered. She wrote letters to them asking them to return the prize money. One of them, now 80 years old, showed gumption and called her to remonstrate. She responded with a shower of abuse, unremitting and relentless. This person put the phone down. Then he called a VIP.

When Vajpayee told Gandhi he was moving her out of culture, he also told her she was being “too enthusiastic” about her job. Gandhi was confused. She’d thought the idea was to do her job enthusiastically. Then the PM referred to this incident.

The thing here is: Maneka’s motives were probably unexceptionable. But what the PM was reacting to was a series of such incidents that had been reported to him since 1999.

Some of them are recounted here. Pilibhit is a tiger reserve. It is also Maneka Gandhi’s constituency. She knows exactly how many tigers there are in the constituency, which one hurt its leg recently, how many cubs the tigress is expecting, etc. In other words, she is deeply interested in the reserve.

Suddenly, tigers started dying in Pilibhit. One died, then another, then another. When the first one died, she called the forest officer and told him to find out why this was happening. When more tigers died, the officer claims she called him, verbally abused him, charging him of being in league with poachers, and then kicked him (Maneka told Business Standard that she never kicked him).

On another occasion, she appointed a member of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) on the Punjab Waqf Board. Membership and control of a Waqf Board is a big deal. It involves a lot of money. He claims she asked him to carry out a certain favour involving the rights to construct on land belonging to the Waqf Board. When he said it couldn’t be done, she is supposed to have told him calmly that she was the master, he was the servant, and it was not in his place to question what she was asking him to do. He refused and got the same treatment.

On yet another occasion, 30 or 40 people working in her ministry wrote to the Cabinet secretary that if she was not checked and her verbal abuse not controlled, they wanted to be transferred out. Gandhi however, says that she caught one of the officials — who is from the reserved quota — red-handed and when she tried to proceed against him, every one from his community leapt at her throat.

In all the above, Gandhi believes she was wronged. But there are other ministers too, who proceed against and even punish officers. Some even manage to breach and reform the system. Why does Gandhi find it so difficult ?

Actually, if you look at it, Gandhi has everything going for her. She is articulate, she can easily be a professional and she doesn’t see every single thing in the world politically. This can be a huge advantage in the rarified world of politics in New Delhi where, often, people are so involved in doing politics that they forget what they are there for in the first place.

Maneka Gandhi’s early school education — the period when you are taught manners, courtesy and etiquette — may leave a lot to be desired. But you cannot fault her for her passion for animals, nature and wildlife. She thinks animals are frequently more humane and reliable than human beings. She might have a point. It is these qualities which are responsible for winning her a ministership — after all, she is an MP from a one-member party and no one is obliged to make her a minister.

The only problem is: her rage and anger at things going wrong in the world — in her world — is undirected. If Maneka Gandhi were to discipline herself to be subtle, ruthless and effective, she is sure to find herself being taken more seriously.