A bitter bureaucrat

At 83, P C Alexander appears to be a very bitter man. Bitter with what he believes are conspiracies hatched by some Congress politicians in 2002 to stop him from becoming the President of India""a job that would have been the ideal end for his long and illustrious career.

So acute has been his anguish and the sense of betrayal that he has made a departure from the chronological sequence that is usually followed by authors while writing their autobiographies.

Thus, the first chapter of Through the Corridors of Power does not deal with the early years of Alexander's life. Instead, it focuses on the fag end of his career and how he had to reluctantly shift from Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, where he enjoyed an uninterrupted tenure of nine years as the Maharashtra governor, to New Delhi to become a member of the Rajya Sabha.

The irony of all this was that his chances of becoming the President were spoilt by the Congress ""the same party whose leaders like Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and P V Narasimha Rao had treated him with a lot of affection and appointed him in key government positions.

Alexander seems to be perplexed by the manner in which some influential persons in the Congress and in the BJP blocked his path to Rashtrapati Bhavan. But such naivete from a man, who has been principal secretary to two Prime Ministers and a close advisor to a third, is mystifying.

His main grievance is against Natwar Singh, for having taken the lead role in the Congress campaign against his candidature as President even though the author had done him no harm.

He is puzzled by the behaviour of Brajesh Mishra, who was the principal secretary to Prime Minister Vajpayee. Mishra, according to him, joined hands with Natwar Singh in propping up the candidature of Krishan Kant as an alternative candidate, even though the BJP as a party had initially decided to support his candidature.

He is also upset with President K R Narayanan, who got used by the Congress leaders to thwart his chances. Until a few days before the last date for filing the nomination papers, Narayanan did not scotch Congress-inspired reports that he too was in the race for a second term as President""a move that Alexander believes was initiated to counter his candidature.

It is interesting to note that Singh, Mishra, and Narayanan""with all of whom the author had problems""belonged to the Indian Foreign Service and had joined politics after their retirement.

In his bid to gain Congress support, Alexander left no stone unturned. He met Congress President Sonia Gandhi to ascertain her view on the matter. From his own account, Sonia did not make any commitment.

But it was clear that Sonia Gandhi's unhappiness about Alexander's acceptance of an offer from the BJP-led government at the Centre in 1998 for a second term as governor of Maharashtra had left an indelible mark on Alexander's relations with the Congress.

The man who was the principal secretary to Sonia's mother-in-law and later to her husband was no longer acceptable to the Congress as a candidate.

Alexander seemed hurt by this rejection. By his own account, this was the most surprising and distressing experience of his career. Surprising, because he has always had a satisfying equation with most Congress leaders he worked with.

It was his tenure as principal secretary to Indira Gandhi that he found the most memorable and satisfying. He enjoyed a good relationship with Rajiv Gandhi also. If the spy scandal that implicated his personal secretary had not forced him to resign, Alexander would have had a longer stint as principal secretary to Rajiv Gandhi.

Of course, after quitting the PMO in 1985, Alexander had several job options, one of them being an offer from Ashok Jain of the Times of India group to become the chief editor of The Economic Times. Alexander declined the offer and instead accepted Rajiv Gandhi's suggestion to become India's High Commissioner in London.

Three years later, he was brought back as governor of Tamil Nadu. Even with P V Narasimha Rao, Alexander continued to have a relationship of mutual trust.

Even during the Emergency years (1975-77), Alexander did not get into any trouble with Indira Gandhi, although he was commerce secretary then. He cites only two instances that could have got him into a situation of conflict with the government.

One pertained to a request from Col J S Anand, father-in-law of Sanjay Gandhi, for removing the ban on exports of chrome ore. Alexander resisted the pressure and rejected the proposal.

The second case was about the Chamanlal group of firms, which wanted him to grant high-value import licence to it against exports of zari goods. Alexander found the request unjustified and turned it down. Ironically, Alexander's real problems with the Chamanlal group started after the Emergency. His firm stand on this issue cost him his job. Prime Minister Morarji Desai made no secret of his desire to see him out of the commerce ministry.

After submitting the path-breaking recommendations on changes in the import-export policy (known as the Alexander committee), Alexander went on leave and took an assignment with the International Trade Centre in Geneva.

Alexander's account of his days with Indira Gandhi from 1981 to 1984, when she was assassinated, has been widely covered by the author in an earlier book.

But the book under review has many more interesting anecdotes that try to project Indira Gandhi as a dynamic Prime Minister and as a sincere person.

The author, however, continues to maintain complete secrecy about the discussion he had with Indira Gandhi after her return from that whirlwind tour of Orissa""a day before she was killed.

Alexander is also completely silent on the Bofors scandal that hit the Rajiv Gandhi government. The book has only one line that is devoted to this scandal, which eventually brought about the downfall of the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989.

It does appear that in spite of the recent Congress snub, Alexander still retains a soft corner for both Rajiv and his mother.

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THROUGH THE CORRIDORS OF POWER: AN INSIDER'S STORY

P C Alexander
HarperCollins Publishers
Price: Rs 500, Pages: 480