HVK Archives: The Maratha straw man
The Maratha straw man - India Today
V. Shankar Aiyar
()
15 May 1997
Title : The Maratha straw man
Author : V. Shankar Aiyar
Publication : India Today
Date : May 15, 1997
He was once described as India's young man in a hurry After all
Sharad Pawar was only 38 years old when-without any remorse-he
usurped the chief ministership of Maharashtra from mentor
Vasantdada Patil. Indeed, it seemed then that the Maratha would
stop at nothing to ensure that Delhi's throne would be his. Almost
two decades have passed since, but Pawar shows no urgency in trying
to change his status from a perpetual prime ministerial aspirant to
actual incumbent.
The Congress leader could have played the regent's role had he
grabbed his opportunities. A month ago, Pawar was tantalisingly
poised to make it to the top with everyone expecting him to split
his party, shore up the H.D. Deve Gowda government and ready
himself for a chair in South Block. He spoke of "a bolt from the
blue" and appeared to throw down the gauntlet. Only to capitulate
and call for party unity. Back in 1990, Pawar's cronies kept
promising V.P. Singh that their leader would cross the floor with
hall the Congress party in tow. Singh waited in vain. And in
January 1991 it was Chandra Shekhar who waited forever to embrace
Pawar and his followers into the Samajwadi Janata Party fold.
Is Pawar a man of threats and no action? Had Bal Thackeray read
him all too correctly when he said that "he is a good conspirator
but he can't deliver"? Many believe that Pawar threatens only to
get into a position to clinch deals. During the recent 'poll' for
the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) leadership, Pawar had almost
the entire Mumbai media believing he was going for Sitaram Kesri's
jugular. Somewhere on his flight to Delhi, Pawar cut his deal-he
would become the party leader in the Lok Sabha. By the time he
reached the capital, he was talking about consensus. Says a caustic
senior Congressman, who was in Pawar's Progressive Democratic Front
(PDF) cabinet: "He just postures- first with Rao, then with Kesri
for the Congress presidentship, after that for the CPP
leadership-and succumbs to the first offer made."
The result is that no Congressman is now willing to stand by him,
even those from his own stable. That should prove his greatest
drawback if one day, uncharacteristically, he makes a real push for
power. Ever since 1978, when he dumped his party to head the first
major coalition government - the PDF - in Maharashtra, he has
carried the stigma of being a Judas, a Cassius, never to be fully
trusted. His credibility has been so dented that motives are
imputed to any and every move he makes. And what makes the
suspicion stick is Pawar's reluctance to take his colleagues into
confidence. Says a senior Congress leader from western Maharashtra:
"He will never tell anyone the whole story. His right hand
probably does not know what his left hand does."
The passage of time between 1978 and the present might have
tempered Pawar's ambitions, but there are people who say that he
collected too many skeletons in his cupboard during this period to
risk annoying anyone. When P.V. Narasimha Rao thought the Maratha
chieftain was out to undermine his leadership, he got Pawar crony
Sudhakarrao Naik to spill the beans. And Pawar's close relation
with Madan Bafna, the state home minister trapped in the Dubai
telephone calls episode, as well as with Pappu Kalani and Hitendra
Thakur, who were both booked under TADA, was exposed. After the
Mumbai riots of 1992-93 and the bomb blasts that followed, Rao
asked Pawar to head back to Maharashtra and put things there in
order. Pawar refused but buckled immediately when told who the
alternative was-archival S.B. Chavan, who could use his position to
dig into Pawar's past. At 56, Pawar has too much at stake. Any
dissent will bring his past, his friends and interests into the
open.
In any case, those who swear by Pawar's leadership abilities have
only to consider cold figures. in the eight years since he took
over as the sole chaperon of the Congress in Maharashtra, the party
has consistently lost ground. The number of MPs in the Lok Sabha
has come down to 15 now from 38 in the 1991 general election. From
a high of 220 seats in the 1988 assembly elections, the Congress
tally went down to 141 in 1990 and then to 80 in the 1995 polls.
And when the Congress should have been capitalising on the
notorious incumbency factor to retain its hold on the local bodies,
the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition wrested six of the eight corporations
and 11 of the 29 zilia parishads from the Congress. Factionalism
within the party, say partymen, is the cause of the rapid erosion
in Congress credibility. And if a senior Congress MP is to be
believed, "Every district has two Congress parties-Congress(l) and
Congress (Pawar). Can you believe that when he was the defence
minister, he would fly down to Pune to address and help his faction
in the Baramati Municipal Council?"
But Pawar seems to be burdened with his own sense of destiny. He
knows that he has to survive to achieve his dream, and it is this
that makes him bulk at walking down to 7, Race Course Road. As his
close associate Prafulla Patel puts it, "The problem with Pawar is
that on the one hand, he is suspected of being a Machiavelli, and,
on the other, he is expected to be a Machiavelli." He, of course,
adds that neither is true, but then not many agree with him.
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