Only four of the 19 Cabinet ministers inducted in 2014 survive in Modi 2.0 today—Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Narendra Tomar, Smriti Irani. Now they’re gripped with uncertainty.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2010 national council meeting in Indore is remembered for many things. Nitin Gadkari had become the youngest party president at 52. His ‘austerity’ measures at the council meeting made headlines. Around 4,400 party delegates were made to stay in tents. Snake charmers were deployed to guard against venomous reptiles slithering inside. Mosquito repellents were in high demand.
Inconveniences aside, the newly-elected BJP president was a big hit. An ordinary party worker, who once stuck posters and wrote graffiti in Nagpur, had risen to occupy the top post. At a cultural evening on the concluding day, Gadkari enthralled the audience, singing Manna Dey’s “Zindagi kaisi hai paheli hai re, kabhi toh hasaye, kabhi ye rulaaye.”
His colleagues remembered his song last week when Gadkari, now the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) turned philosophical at a Nagpur event. Lamenting how politics has become “100 per cent sattakaran (powerplay)”, he said, “I think a lot about when I should quit politics. There are more things worth doing in life than politics.”
Sanyas from politics at 65! Why would such thoughts come to him? After all, he has a weighty portfolio. He has set new goals — a highway construction target of 60 km per day. He is one of the very few — if not the only — Cabinet ministers who actually run their ministries, taking decisions on their own. The rest are happy, waiting for and carrying out instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Bureaucrats recall an instance when then-MoRTH secretary received a call from higher powers to convey to the minister that he should stop weekend visits to Nagpur, which happens to be the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The secretary passed on the unpleasant task to a joint secretary. When the latter sheepishly conveyed it to Gadkari, he apparently laughed: “Tell whoever has sent this message that Nagpur is my constituency. Thousands wait for me to get their work done. I won’t disappoint them.”
His equation with the RSS top brass remains strong even in the Narendra Modi era. It has kept him afloat politically even after being denied a second term as BJP president due to hitherto unproven charges of financial impropriety.
As for his angst about the politics of sattakaran or power play, he couldn’t have been serious — unless he was taking a jibe at the current dispensation in the BJP. To cite just one instance, it’s coming from a politician whose late-night arrival in Panaji had enabled the BJP, with only 13 MLAs in the 40-member Goa assembly, to form the government in 2017.
So, what explains his philosophical ruminations last week? As mentioned above, he’s one of the very few ministers in the Modi Cabinet who run their ministries. As BJP president, he used to say that his party needed to increase its vote share by 10 per cent — from 18 per cent then — to come to power. Well, the BJP’s vote share has doubled since 2009. He must be thankful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for that.
