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.
Also read: Politics now 100% about ‘power play’, think a lot about when I should quit — Nitin Gadkari
Fear of the unknown
There is a catch here. Gadkari is a man of ideas and purpose — electrical highway between Delhi and Mumbai, hovercraft from Delhi to Agra’s Taj Mahal, seaplanes, amino acid from hair, storage of country’s urine to end fertiliser imports, and so on and so forth. He doesn’t find many takers for his ideas in the current dispensation.
For a minister who was called ‘Spiderman’ by BJP MP Tapir Gao for creating a web of roads across India, Gadkari’s graph has been falling progressively. He might not be the most popular leader in the Modi regime, but his efficiency as an administrator was at least acknowledged in Modi 1.0. In 2014, he was given the portfolio of shipping along with the road transport and highways ministry. In 2017, he was also given Uma Bharti’s portfolios of water resources, river development, and Ganga rejuvenation. For a few months in 2014, after Gopinath Munde’s tragic accident, he had also been given the additional portfolios of rural development and panchayati raj.
Even though Gadkari was kept out of the coveted Cabinet Committee on Security, he was a heavyweight minister in Modi 1.0. Those close to him got an impression that he even wanted an over-arching infrastructure ministry, including the railways, too.
Gadkari has, however, been shedding ‘weight’ in the Modi 2.0 government. In May 2019, while he retained the MoRTH, he was divested of shipping and water resources, river development, and Ganga rejuvenation. He was given MSME (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) instead, along with the MoRTH. Last year, he was divested of the MSME portfolio, too.
Also read: How ‘wanderers’ of BJP are surviving outside PM Modi’s Union Cabinet, & what they are doing now
Gadkari’s loss of ‘weight’ in Modi govt
There was a time when Gadkari used to participate a lot in Cabinet deliberations. He rarely intervenes nowadays, say government functionaries. Gadkari would often tell reporters that he was an ‘outsider’ in Delhi. When he landed in Delhi on a winter evening in 2010, he wasn’t carrying a sweater, recall BJP leaders. A party colleague took him out to buy one. Until his arrival in Delhi, party leaders would wind up by 7 pm. Gadkari started late-night meetings. He was a great host, though. BJP leaders would jocularly say that he fed them such sumptuous meals in late evenings that they would be sleepy and say ‘yes’ to whatever Gadkari proposed.
When he became BJP president, the so-called ‘D-4’ or ‘Delhi-4’ — Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, and Ananth Kumar — ruled the roost. It was a major challenge for the outsider. There is no D-4 today. But Gadkari remains an ‘outsider’ in the Modi-Shah dispensation, too. As the BJP president, he promoted many leaders — Dharmendra Pradhan and Smriti Irani, to name just two. They keep a safe distance from him today.
Gadkari is a member of the BJP Parliamentary Board, the party’s top decision-making body. But its meetings are a mere formality to put a stamp on what Modi and Amit Shah have already decided. The BJP toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led government in Maharashtra and then installed rebel Shiv Sainik Eknath Shinde as the CM. Gadkari watched the entire drama from the sidelines.
What makes Gadkari philosophical
Modi and Shah are promoting a new generation of leaders — their loyalists, essentially. Veterans are predictably gripped with fear of the unknown — uncertainty about their political future. Modi inducted 19 Cabinet ministers from the BJP in 2014. Four of them — Gopinath Munde, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Ananth Kumar — have passed away. Venkaiah Naidu was made vice-president and three were sent to Raj Bhavans. Only four of those 19 survive in Modi’s Cabinet today — Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Narendra Tomar, and Smriti Irani.
Overall, 69 ministers have left the Modi government since 2014. Most are fading into oblivion. While Uma Bharti remains in headlines, throwing stones at liquor shops, others are waiting anxiously for rehabilitation. These include many former high-profile ministers — to name a few, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar, Harsh Vardhan, Suresh Prabhu, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, and Mahesh Sharma.
They are unlikely to make it back into the Cabinet, though. Those who’ve managed to survive in the Cabinet since 2014 must keep their fingers crossed. If there are just four surviving from the 2014 Cabinet today, one can only imagine how many of them will figure in Modi 3.0 Cabinet — unless the Opposition parties’ hope of a miracle comes true.
Modi and Shah are in the process of carrying out a wholesale change in the government and the party. That’s probably making veterans philosophical. Nitin Gadkari should remember what Shivraj Chouhan sang that evening in Indore in 2010: “O nadiya chale, chale re dhaara/ chanda chale, chale re tara/tujhko chalna hoga, tujhko chalna hoga.”
Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)