 "Raman Singh")
Monsoon rain is scanty in Kawardha district in western Chhattisgarh. But on that mid-July Saturday in the early 1980s, it has been raining cats and dogs in the district that falls in the rain shadow area.
A large number of the patients have lined up at Kawardha town’s Bharat Mata Dharmarta Chikitsa Kendra — a charitable medical centre managed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. Saturdays are the days when it is the turn of Raman Singh, a young graduate in ayurvedic medicine, to render service at the centre.
“Since it has been raining so heavily, no one expected the doctor to turn up and examine the patients who had travelled miles from the villages to come to the centre,” says an RSS office bearer who has been overseeing things at the centre. To everyone’s surprise, the young man soon reaches the place, pushing his bicycle pedals furiously.
Drenched in rain water, Singh examines each patient and completes the job he has been assigned. Intent on helping the people with their health problems, he ignores the large number of cattle that have also taken shelter from the steady rain at the centre and are now all around his work table.
This is what Singh, chief minister of Chhattisgarh for 10 long years now, is identified with in his home town of Kawardha. “He never shies away from the task he has been given and that has been his biggest strength,” the RSS official says. The Hindu organisation takes immense pride in having “discovered” Singh.
Another RSS office bearer recalls how they established contact with Singh, now 61 years old, soon after he completed his graduation and started practising in the town. “We were so impressed with his discipline, dedication and service to the people that we decided to build a long association with Raman Singh,” he says.
Singh was born to a lawyer father and a homemaker mother who was highly spiritual. Early in life, he started attending RSS functions and got associated with the charitable medical centre where he volunteered his services. But it wasn’t as if the political mantle he now wears was his for the asking. In fact, say RSS functionaries, Singh was never interested in politics and when the subject came up for discussions, he usually avoided participating in the conversations.
Singh himself say, “Politics was never in my nature and I am in politics by default.” How he came to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, corroborates his claim. The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha —BJP’s youth wing — had organised a meeting at Singh’s residence in which the unit president failed to turn up. “The people present proposed that Ramanji should be appointed the president, and this was how he entered politics,” dicloses a BJP leader from the district. In fact, Singh expressed irritation at the step and resisted becoming BJYM chief but gave up when his seniors convinced him that politics needed people like him.
A large number of the patients have lined up at Kawardha town’s Bharat Mata Dharmarta Chikitsa Kendra — a charitable medical centre managed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. Saturdays are the days when it is the turn of Raman Singh, a young graduate in ayurvedic medicine, to render service at the centre.
“Since it has been raining so heavily, no one expected the doctor to turn up and examine the patients who had travelled miles from the villages to come to the centre,” says an RSS office bearer who has been overseeing things at the centre. To everyone’s surprise, the young man soon reaches the place, pushing his bicycle pedals furiously.
Drenched in rain water, Singh examines each patient and completes the job he has been assigned. Intent on helping the people with their health problems, he ignores the large number of cattle that have also taken shelter from the steady rain at the centre and are now all around his work table.
This is what Singh, chief minister of Chhattisgarh for 10 long years now, is identified with in his home town of Kawardha. “He never shies away from the task he has been given and that has been his biggest strength,” the RSS official says. The Hindu organisation takes immense pride in having “discovered” Singh.
Another RSS office bearer recalls how they established contact with Singh, now 61 years old, soon after he completed his graduation and started practising in the town. “We were so impressed with his discipline, dedication and service to the people that we decided to build a long association with Raman Singh,” he says.
Singh was born to a lawyer father and a homemaker mother who was highly spiritual. Early in life, he started attending RSS functions and got associated with the charitable medical centre where he volunteered his services. But it wasn’t as if the political mantle he now wears was his for the asking. In fact, say RSS functionaries, Singh was never interested in politics and when the subject came up for discussions, he usually avoided participating in the conversations.
Singh himself say, “Politics was never in my nature and I am in politics by default.” How he came to join the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, corroborates his claim. The Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha —BJP’s youth wing — had organised a meeting at Singh’s residence in which the unit president failed to turn up. “The people present proposed that Ramanji should be appointed the president, and this was how he entered politics,” dicloses a BJP leader from the district. In fact, Singh expressed irritation at the step and resisted becoming BJYM chief but gave up when his seniors convinced him that politics needed people like him.
* * *
In 1984, BJP fielded Singh as its candidate in the municipality election in the town, a traditional Congress stronghold. He contested the election from Thakurpara where he had been running his clinic and providing free medicines to the needy. He won with a thumping margin. Singh was one of the only two BJP members elected to the 15-member municipality. According to an RSS functionary, Congress leaders attempted to lure both the BJP winners to its side. “But the two refused to buckle and proved their dedication to the party could not be challenged or put at stake,” he adds.
Singh never looked back. He was pitted against the Congress candidate in the Kawardha assembly constituency in 1990. Singh won the election and even retained it in the next election. However, in 1998, he was defeated by his Congress rival by a huge margin of 15,000 votes. But by then, he had become an astute politician.
The once-reluctant politician has an uncanny sense of timing and has never said no to a challenge. These were in evidence when BJP asked him to contest against Congress heavyweight Motilal Vora from Rajnandgaon in the 1999 Lok Sabha. He campaigned hard and felled the seasoned Congressman, who had been both chief minister and governor. Singh was rewarded with the post of minister of state for commerce in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Singh’s supporters say that taking on Vora was one of two crucial decisions that he has taken to prove his political acumen.
The second path-breaking decision he took was to quit the union ministry and return to Chhattisgarh in early 2002 to lead the party as its state president. A year later, BJP trounced the Ajit Jogi-led Congress in the Assembly polls, and Singh was the shoo-in for the chief minister’s chair.
“My becoming the chief minister too has been by default,” says Singh. In the run-up to the 2003 polls, former Union minister Dilip Singh Judeo had been the star campaigner for BJP, but just before the polling, he was caught on camera allegedly accepting a bribe to influence mining rights — which virtually crushed all his chances at becoming chief minister.
A decade in office now, Singh is seldom out of the news. Rated as a successful administrator, he has carved a niche for himself with his no-nonsense, can-do style, bucking the trend of offering sops to garner votes and putting his faith in development instead.
Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has been his role model. And Singh doesn’t wear his Hindutva on the sleeves of his safari suit — which he favours over the traditional political wear of kurta-pyjama. “There is so much work to do and my motto is to deliver if you get the chance and make a difference,” he says.
The difference he has made to Chhattisgarh during a rule of nearly 10 years is his trump card as he prepares to face the people at the assembly polls next month. The tech-savvy Singh has turned the backward state into a model of development despite recurring Naxal violence. If Chhattisgarh is no longer the wretched land of the dispossessed, the credit goes entirely to Singh.
Development and growth will propel the people to vote for BJP in the November elections, he states confidently. “The state has been a model for the implementation of the Public Distribution System (PDS) besides food security and other ambitious schemes,” Singh says. In Bastar, he points out, the party is in a comfortable position and will perform well in the region that holds the key to power in the state. “We will easily form the government for the third term,” he adds with a broad smile.
Singh loves music and old Hindi songs. “Wahan kaun hai tera, musaafir, jayega kahan” (Who’s there for you, traveller, where will you go), the song from the film Guide, composed and sung by S D Burman, is his favourite. But he himself need ask no questions of the sort as far as Chhattisgarh is concerned. For, just yet, it doesn’t seem like Chief Minister Raman Singh is going anywhere.
