Under Patil’s Allure

By Sushil Kutty, Hardnews, Delhi
 From Sardar Patel to Shivraj Patil, it has been a long and hard plough for successive Union home ministers of India. But if Sardar Patel took to the task with an intensity and purpose that brooked no delay, Shivraj Patil, with his appetite for dawdling, has ensured that when it is time to write the history of our times, he would cut a sorry and inadequate figure ranged against that first and ‘toughest' of stalwarts to have graced the office in free India- - the original ‘Iron Man'. Surely, not the pretender to that title who strutted the stage much later.

The ‘Sardar' went about consolidating India's territorial integrity with a zeal and purpose that found a match only in the ambivalence of his colleagues in the cabinet, a trait that present incumbent Manmohan Singh appears to share and celebrate as a routine, notwithstanding that "tryst with destiny" call. That destiny now appears to be in jeopardy, essentially because of personalities like Shivraj Patil, who, for worse rather than better, are not fashioned in the mould of Sardar Patel.

Home ministers need to have an ear to the ground, but for all purposes and, by all accounts, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil seems to have an ear to the ground only on real estate that houses 10 Janpath. For the likes of Patil, the annual hike by the hundreds to the Amarnath shrine -- which is at the root of the crisis now holding India's territorial integrity to ransom -- can take a hike as long as nothing comes in the way of their daily yatra to pay obeisance at 10 Janpath.

The uncharitable view is that Patil owes his ‘No. 2' standing in the Union Cabinet to 10 Janpath. This view says he owes this proximity to the fact that he was Speaker of the Lok Sabha- - and before that the deputy speaker and speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly -- and that the chairperson of the UPA, "unlettered" as she was in "matters of Lok Sabha", took a fancy to his grasp of all things Lok Sabha, and the "teacher" was anointed Union home minister! Stories like these abound, even as they confound. But if there were lessons to be learnt from this mode of ‘recruitment' of cabinet ministers, they are only now becoming apparent with Patil's "goof--ups" getting to be a habit with him, and his "ostrich-like attitude" stretching nerves on both sides of the Parliament divide, not to speak that of those who make up the ranks of the vocal hoi polloi. It's the nation that is suffering. And, let us not forget the bloodletting.

Shivraj Vishwanath Patil is a Lingayat who was born on October 12, 1935 in Latur district of Maharashtra, the same Latur which was rocked by a devastating earthquake of 6.3 on the Richter scale. It had left in debris scores of villages in the two districts of Latur and Osmanabad and over 7,500 dead.

Patil's foray into politics saw him become deputy speaker and speaker of the Maharashtra assembly although his performance in either of those positions was nothing as earth--shattering, or rocking, as the Latur quake. In 1980, he was elected to the Seventh Lok Sabha and by 1999 he had won seven successive Lok Sabha elections. Elected Speaker of the 11th Lok Sabha, he is largely known for introducing the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award, an honour that is unlikely to come his way considering that he failed to make it to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and especially not with the record he has had in his latest stint as a cabinet minister.