Read Online The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sanjaya Baru
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‘please discuss’ and preferring to give oral instructions to junior officials such as joint secretaries and deputy secretaries. They would then be required to put those instructions on file as their own advice. It was classic bureaucratic risk aversion aimed at never getting into any controversy or trouble. Nair depended a great deal on Pulok Chatterjee, a joint secretary who had worked with both Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia, for advice on important policy decisions.
Pulok, like Nair, suffered from the handicap that his own service had never regarded him as one of its bright sparks. A serving IAS officer, he had never worked in any important ministry. He was inducted into Rajiv’s PMO as a deputy secretary after having served as a district official in Amethi, his constituency in Uttar Pradesh, where he had caught Rajiv’s eye. After Rajiv’s death, he chose to work for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation where he did some worthwhile social development work. But this meant that he was not just outside government but completely identified with the Gandhi family. When Pulok returned to government, it was to work on the personal staff of Sonia Gandhi when she was leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the PM. Indeed, Pulok was the single most important point of regular contact between the PM and Sonia. He was also the PMO’s main point of contact with the National Advisory Council (NAC), a high-profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi, with social activists as members. It was sometimes dubbed the Shadow Cabinet.
When not at these meetings, the affable, pipe-smoking, and understated Pulok remained mostly confined to his room in South Block, rarely travelling outside Delhi. During my time in the PMO, the only occasion on which I found him keen on accompanying the PM was when Dr Singh went to Cuba. With leftist leanings, Pulok was never too enthusiastic about Dr Singh’s focus on improving relations with the US. Whenever Dr Singh and Sonia had to speak from the same platform, Pulok and I would exchange their draft speeches so that they remained in step in their public utterances. While I always wrote these speeches for the PM, Pulok was largely a messenger carrying Sonia’s speeches to me, since her speeches were mostly written by Congress party politicians or her close associates. Pulok was in charge of monitoring the implementation of the UPA’s National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP)—the joint key objectives of the coalition government. This enabled him to seek regular information from all ministries on what they were doing. Pulok would duly produce elaborate charts that listed the promises—more than a hundred— enshrined in the NCMP, assign responsibility for their implementation to various ministries and report back to the PMO on the status of their implementation.
Apart from teaming up with Pulok, Nair also sought to make himself politically relevant to the PM by projecting himself as the PM’s link with the Left. He had been a member of the CPI(M)’s Students Federation of India (SFI) during his college days in Kerala. He revived these ties by becoming close to the senior CPI(M) leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who hailed from Punjab, Nair’s parent state in the IAS. Proximity to Surjeet served Nair well, earning him a place in Gujral’s PMO. Apart from being fellow Punjabis, Gujral and Surjeet were close friends. During his second stint in the PMO, Nair was able to use his association with Surjeet and with CPI(M) leaders from Kerala, especially S.R. Pillai, a member of the CPI(M) politburo, to help Dr Singh manage the Left.
Even with its combined strength, I felt that the Nair-Pulok duo was not a patch on the magisterial Brajesh Mishra who ran
Pulok, like Nair, suffered from the handicap that his own service had never regarded him as one of its bright sparks. A serving IAS officer, he had never worked in any important ministry. He was inducted into Rajiv’s PMO as a deputy secretary after having served as a district official in Amethi, his constituency in Uttar Pradesh, where he had caught Rajiv’s eye. After Rajiv’s death, he chose to work for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation where he did some worthwhile social development work. But this meant that he was not just outside government but completely identified with the Gandhi family. When Pulok returned to government, it was to work on the personal staff of Sonia Gandhi when she was leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the PM. Indeed, Pulok was the single most important point of regular contact between the PM and Sonia. He was also the PMO’s main point of contact with the National Advisory Council (NAC), a high-profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi, with social activists as members. It was sometimes dubbed the Shadow Cabinet.
When not at these meetings, the affable, pipe-smoking, and understated Pulok remained mostly confined to his room in South Block, rarely travelling outside Delhi. During my time in the PMO, the only occasion on which I found him keen on accompanying the PM was when Dr Singh went to Cuba. With leftist leanings, Pulok was never too enthusiastic about Dr Singh’s focus on improving relations with the US. Whenever Dr Singh and Sonia had to speak from the same platform, Pulok and I would exchange their draft speeches so that they remained in step in their public utterances. While I always wrote these speeches for the PM, Pulok was largely a messenger carrying Sonia’s speeches to me, since her speeches were mostly written by Congress party politicians or her close associates. Pulok was in charge of monitoring the implementation of the UPA’s National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP)—the joint key objectives of the coalition government. This enabled him to seek regular information from all ministries on what they were doing. Pulok would duly produce elaborate charts that listed the promises—more than a hundred— enshrined in the NCMP, assign responsibility for their implementation to various ministries and report back to the PMO on the status of their implementation.
Apart from teaming up with Pulok, Nair also sought to make himself politically relevant to the PM by projecting himself as the PM’s link with the Left. He had been a member of the CPI(M)’s Students Federation of India (SFI) during his college days in Kerala. He revived these ties by becoming close to the senior CPI(M) leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who hailed from Punjab, Nair’s parent state in the IAS. Proximity to Surjeet served Nair well, earning him a place in Gujral’s PMO. Apart from being fellow Punjabis, Gujral and Surjeet were close friends. During his second stint in the PMO, Nair was able to use his association with Surjeet and with CPI(M) leaders from Kerala, especially S.R. Pillai, a member of the CPI(M) politburo, to help Dr Singh manage the Left.
Even with its combined strength, I felt that the Nair-Pulok duo was not a patch on the magisterial Brajesh Mishra who ran
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