The master negotiator
Winning a LS election is topmost on Pranab Mukherjee's political agenda
| "Just a moment" said Mukherjee and proceeded to tell him not only that but minute details of all the other Indian states "" the month and year when they came into existence, who became the acting chief minister pending election, what the Congress stand was on their statehood and how the party resolved problems of leadership. The conversation went on for nearly 45 minutes, with Mukherjee recalling minutiae of state formation. |
| Given this kind of computer-like memory, it was amusing for many when more than 20 years after he came back into the Congress, he couldn't recall the name of the party he formed after committing what was possibly the only political indiscretion in his career in public life. |
| The story goes like this: When Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was in West Bengal. Pranab Mukherjee accompanied him back for the funeral, and in the course of the flight also suggested that to prevent India from becoming rudderless, a person be appointed prime minister in the interim, in a Gulzari Lal Nanda kind of arrangement. |
| Rajiv, new to politics but shrewd enough to recognise ambition when he saw it, cut Mukherjee off almost immediately. Rivals like Arjun Singh "" who was later appointed vice president of the Congress although the party constitution had no such provision "" fanned the fires when a whisper campaign started that Mukherjee was seeing forbidden dreams. |
| Mukherjee's rehabilitation took time coming, but it was complete when the P V Narasimha Rao government came to power and he was appointed commerce minister, foreign minister and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Narasimha Rao understood the value of the mine of information he has kept stored in his head. |
| This doesn't just restrict itself to facts. His mind is also a compendium of history "" and when a party has to ponder the past and how to change its stand to be consistent with modern realities, Pranab Mukherjee is an invaluable asset. |
| However, all this time, he could never get elected to the Lok Sabha although he tried twice and lost both times. Never having been chief minister or MLA, Mukherjee, understandably sees this as a handicap. |
| Now, in the current phase of reinvention of the persona of both the Congress and Pranab Mukherjee himself, winning a Lok Sabha election is topmost on Mukherjee's political agenda. Hence all the speculation on whether he will contest the Jangipur Lok Sabha seat or not, whether he will be able to win, etc. |
| Party president Sonia Gandhi has made it clear to him that she needs him in Delhi. Mukherjee is chairman of five or six committees in the Congress. He played a crucial role in drawing up the manifesto, tempering ideas that might have been too radical, pushing other appeals that he thought were too tentative. |
| Mukherjee's great asset is masterful negotiating skills. It was at his instance, at the Congress Working Committee meeting that gathered to discuss the manifesto, for instance, that Sonia Gandhi dropped references to labour reforms when the issue threatened to drive the trade union wing away from the party. |
| It was he who fixed the Karunakaran problem in Kerala, recognising that the veteran leader had embarrassed the party but also acknowledging that the party couldn't just wash its hands of a leader who stood by Indira Gandhi in 1977 when the world was a very cold place for most Congressmen. |
| He negotiated the Congress deal with the Telengana Rajya Samiti (TRS) in Andhra Pradesh, and because he was one of the seniormost Congressmen in the party, it was hard for anyone to overrule him, although local Congressmen were furious at the deal. Before Manmohan Singh went o Madras to sew up the deal with the DMK and allies, it was Pranab Mukherjee who did all the groundwork. |
| By contrast, it was Sonia Gandhi who was directly dealing with Mayawati on the issue of an adjustment between the Congress and the BSP. Look at the disastrous shape that deal has taken! Mayawati has hit the road announcing she considers the Congress Manuwadi too and has actually named a candidate even for Amethi. |
| The BJP has managed to successfully prevent an alliance between the Congress and the BSP in UP, thus ensuring the decimation of the Congress from this state yet again. |
| Ask a Congressman now, and in the current scheme of things he will say that Dr Manmohan Singh will be Sonia Gandhi's candidate for finance minister, but Pranab Mukherjee will be her political Number 2. |
| His encyclopaedic knowledge of rules and regulations and insistence on perfection in the observance of rules and procedures (many in the Rajya Sabha have got the rough edge of his tongue when they have tried to short circuit procedures) qualifies him to the job. |
| But the question is: will he ever earn Bengal's respect? If he fights and loses this election from Jangipur "" as Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has predicted he will because of the preponderance of CP(I)M-minded Muslims there "" his career will receive a serious setback. |
| As it is, after the debacle of Sidhartha Shankar Ray, who hunted out and killed so many Naxalites in the 1970s that the CPIM had no difficulty in putting down roots in the state, it is hard to earn respect as a Congressman from West Bengal. |
| Mamata Bannerjee made a place for herself through sheer grit and the fighting spirit she showed in dealing with the Communists. That is what the anti-communist population of Bengal craves from the rest of the Congress. |
| Instead, the pinko image of Congresmen like Pranab Mukherjee just erodes respect for him. The Communists have never considered him a serious political threat. So he's the ultimate consensus man who has never attacked anyone in public in his entire life. |
| But for the last few weeks, every day, the press in West Bengal is sitting up and taking notice of the moves Pranab Mukherjee makes. There is wall-writing about him. This, in itself, is new. |
| Mukherjee will not say 'no' to mass politics now. Who knows, a mass leader might be required if the Congress comes close to forming the government and Sonia Gandhi's candidature is unacceptable to other allies. Mukherjee, master negotiator, will be on hand "" and with an election certificate for the Lok Sabha too! |