Newsmaker: Nitin Gadkari

BJP's new defender of the faith

He is not known for a sophisticated world view but Nitin Gadkari, the front-runner for the party’s national president, is likely to be just what the RSS ordered. 

There is little doubt that senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and President of the Maharashtra unit Nitin Gadkari will replace Rajnath Singh as President of the party, possibly at the end of the year. 

With this appointment, the BJP’s supporters can be excused for asking (in varying degrees of outrage): “what, another Brahmin?” The leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley; the deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj (who is likely to become the leader of the opposition), and the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, are all Brahmins. 

But then, a social inclusion project is not the highest on the BJP’s list of priorities right now. The party is struggling to decide what it should be, and Gadkari’s appointment is one step in helping it figure out this painful existential question. 

The RSS is telling the BJP: “if you’d only listened to us, you might have been in a ruling position at the Centre.” Whatever the merit of this argument, it is clear that aided by an obliging Rajnath Singh, the RSS is looking for ways to tighten its grip over the BJP and Gadkari’s appointment is part of that plan. 

Originally from Nagpur — where the RSS also has its headquarters — Gadkari has been the leader of opposition in the Maharashtra Vidhan Parishad, or the upper House. He’s not known for his vote-catching abilities: indeed, the BJP put up a less than edifying performance in the recent Assembly elections, winning just 46 seats against 54 in 2004. Gadkari did, however, win for the party, four out of six Assembly seats in the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency (in the Lok Sabha, however, Congress candidate Vilas Muttemwar retained his seat). 

Gadkari began life as a small-time contractor for the Public Works Department (PWD) who prospered and set up several companies. While building roads in the tribal areas in Maharashtra, he saw how the tribals lived and confessed to having a brief, secret affection for Naxalites. 

His experience with the government at the time was not happy and shaped his world view: if you’re a bureaucrat and he’s a minister, you risk saying “no” to him at your peril. He knows from personal experience how obstructive as well as malleable the bureaucracy can be, and doesn’t baulk at abusing uncooperative bureaucrats in fairly basic language. 

His career as a contractor and businessman saw him foray into the complex world of cooperatives in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, which is traditionally short of capital and is one reason the cooperative experiment never took off there. But Gadkari did start cooperatives in this region. He is the chairman of a group of companies called Poorti: construction and furniture and retail supermarkets. 

In 1995, after a career spent pretty much confined to the upper House, Gadkari became minister in the public works department. He did some good work — creating a scientific methodology for BOT (build-own-operate) projects by initiating traffic surveys, working out internal rates of return and deciding the concession period of toll. He made the government of Maharashtra formulate a new toll policy amid scepticism and outrage. 

His election to the upper House unopposed in 2002 was cause for heartburn. He was proud of the fact that he had many friends in the opposition including various Thackeray factions and Vilasrao Deshmukh, but a section of the Maharashtra BJP felt he had compromised himself politically. They said he showed a marked lack of enthusiasm for going for the government’s jugular when the opportunity arose. They also said this was why no one opposed him in 2002. 

Be that as it may, the fact is Gadkari has come to be regarded as a politician who understands the interface of development and politics. What is more, no one seems to have any charges of corruption to make against him. 

Gadkari is going to face a different set of players when he becomes BJP president. Nagpur is a cosmopolitan city but it doesn’t really equip you with the intellectual wherewithal to speak on legal reform as well as world political developments in the same breath. And that is what the national president of an opposition party is required to do. 

But if it is a frog in the well the RSS wants as the new BJP chief, it has been wise in choosing Gadkari: an honest, efficient frog.