New Delhi: On Thursday, the Congress party gave one its most seasoned players, former union minister Jairam Ramesh, the responsibility of reforming a department that has for long been perceived as the party’s Achilles Heel.
He was appointed general secretary in-charge of communications, publicity and media, including digital and social media — the last being an addition to his responsibilities from that held by his predecessor at the post, Randeep Surjewala.
An engineer by education, economist by interest and “policy wonk” (a term used by colleagues to describe Ramesh) by profession, Ramesh is known to be a tech-savvy man who’s “with the times” and wears his wit on his sleeve.
While the social media department may have been brought under Ramesh as part of the party’s renewed structure for its communication systems, if Ramesh’s own tweets are anything to go by, one wouldn’t be wrong to expect some tongue-in-cheek firework.
Sample this: In January this year, when Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, a member of the dissident G-23 group within the Congress had been awarded a Padma Award by the Modi government, Jairam put out a tweet taking a subtle jibe at him with a wordplay on his name. “Right thing to do. He wants to be Azad not Ghulam,” Ramesh had said.
Right thing to do. He wants to be Azad not Ghulam. https://t.co/iMWF00S9Ib
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) January 25, 2022
Since then, while Azad seems to be on a reconciliatory road with the party, Ramesh has been assigned important roles like that of being a member of the party’s task force for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Ramesh’s experience as a regular columnist and author of multiple books is expected to help him navigate a media landscape which the party thinks has become incredibly hostile to the Congress.
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Wide connection in vernacular, English media
Ramesh’s colleagues within the party say that his wide networks across the country, among politicians, civil society and most importantly for the post, in both vernacular and English media, makes him a good choice to handle the communications department.
Moreover, his strict discipline with his team, as well as his ability to get even the most antagonistic groups within the party to the discussion table, is also said to be an advantage.
“He has an uncanny ability to get those people around a table who you would never expect to see together. And once he does that, he can also mediate amongst them, to find the lowest common denominator and work with that,” said a Congress functionary who’s worked under Ramesh.
A senior leader who claims to have known Ramesh “since he’s been around at the AICC” said that his strategic inputs have always been valued by the leadership. His skills as a draftsman also make him the party’s go-to person for all policy and position papers, making him close to the Congress high command.
In fact, the Udaipur Nav Sankalp Declaration adopted at the recently held Chintan Shivir, was also drafted by Ramesh, said party sources.
“His organisational and strategic inputs are always sought for all major decisions of the party. In the 2004 elections when the UPA came to power for the first time, the Congress war-room was run by Ramesh,” said the senior leader quoted above.
A second Congress functionary said that since that election, the “rules of the Congress war-room” have always been relaxed for him.
“Whether he’s officially given responsibility of the war-room or not, the doors are always open for him and his inputs”, said the functionary.
A second senior leader, a MP, said that Ramesh was an avid reader, and one of the few people who’s “read all the books in his own library”. He’s also a music aficionado, with special interest in Carnatic classical music.
“He’s someone who has diverse interests and likes reading about varied topics. It is this quality of his, coupled with his education, that makes him a policy wonk,” said the MP.
Engineer & economist, with keen interest in physics
Ramesh graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay in 1975 and thereafter went to the Carnegie Mellon University in the US, where he received a Master’s degree in public policy and public management. He also started on a PhD programme at the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MIT), but could not complete it due to exigencies in his family.
He worked briefly at the World Bank, before he returned to India in 1979. He then began working in the policy space with governmental agencies, beginning as an assistant to economist Lovraj Kumar at the Bureau of Industrial Costs and Prices.
In a 2011 interview, Ramesh had said that he went to IIT not because he was particularly interested in engineering, but because his father asked him to. Over the years, it was economics which became a subject of great interest to him. He also had a keen interest in physics.
“I read Paul Samuelson (Nobel-winning economist) when I was 17. I found him very interesting; his presentation, the substance, issues such as population, growth. That’s what got me thinking of economics, the larger issues of life, than worrying about engineering drawings and mathematical formulae”, Ramesh had said in the interview.
He added: “I started off with a great fascination for physics. I still have an interest in physics. I can’t read technical physics anymore, because obviously it’s impossible to keep track. I retain an interest in science, but obviously I’m not a scientist. It makes it easier to converse with many of these scientists because they can’t bullshit you.”
After working with Kumar, Ramesh went on to work at the Advisory Board on Energy, the Planning Commission, the ministry of industry and other departments of the central government, where he contributed as an economist and policy-maker.
In the 1990s, he served as officer on special duty (OSD) in Prime Minister V.P. Singh’s government, then as OSD in Narsimha Rao’s PMO, and thereafter as part of the finance ministry under then minister Manmohan Singh.
Under Singh, he was part of the team that enacted India’s economic reforms in 1991. He then worked as advisor to the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission in 1992, was part of a special delegation sent to Jammu and Kashmir in 1993, and also advisor to finance minister P. Chidambaram between 1996 and 1998. He was also part of a central government delegation to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1999.
Between 2000-2002 he served across various state governments — as part of the Planning Board of the Karnataka government, the Economic Advisory Council of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments, and in the Development Council of the Rajasthan government.
He was secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in 2004, when he was made chairman of the Congress’ Poll Strategy Panel before the Lok Sabha election. At the time he was also minister of state (MoS) for Power, and Commerce and Industry — posts he resigned from before taking on the mantle of poll strategist for his party.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha for the first time in 2004 and has been elected to the Upper House multiple times since then. Currently, he’s a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka. Ramesh has, however, never contested a public election — either for Lok Sabha, the state assembly or any other elected body.
After the UPA win in 2009, he was made Minister of Forests and Environment in the central government. One of his most momentous decisions as minister was banning the use of bulls as performing animals, which set the precedent for the ban on the Jallikatu festival in Tamil Nadu in 2016.
His tenure as minister saw many controversies.
In 2010, Ramesh, then Environment minister, ordered an indefinite moratorium on Bt Brinjal, a genetically-engineered form of the vegetable, made to resist the fruit and shoot borer, a kind of pest. At the time he’d said that India needed an independent biotechnology regulator and transparent testing system to introduce transgenic crops.
He later also chastised his own government for not being able to form such a regulatory body.
In 2013, Ramesh, then the Rural Affairs Minister, faced off against the Odisha government and Vedanta Aluminium (VAL), over bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills. Ramesh urged the two to “spare” the Niyamgiri Hills, and mine for bauxite elsewhere.
The Odisha government and VAL needed bauxite as raw material for its Lanjigarh refinery. At the time, he’d said that the the new Land Acquisition Bill gave rights to tribals and farmers to reject or accept any project. He’d earlier denied government clearance to the project.
Environment has been a continuing interest for Ramesh and he is currently part of an International Advisory Board (IAB), which gives strategic policy advice to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on environmentally sound technologies for developing nations.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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