Cong’s troubleshooter whose mark was on every UPA policy
NEW DELHI: Two senior ministers had taken exactly opposite stands amid a looming economic crisis. It was 2008 and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh quickly formed a group of ministers—the UPA era’s favourite tool of settling policy troubles—to suggest a solution.
At the GoM meeting, one minister maintained that the Indian corporate sector must be given some relief. The other and more powerful one took a stand that the government must not intervene in matters of private business. Mukherjee finally intervened and declared that the government has to take a “political decision” and not an “economic one”.
A few days later, India announced its first stimulus package to tackle the global slowdown triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US.
In 2004, when the UPA came to power, Mukherjee had initially hoped for the home ministry portfolio. He even started brushing up the standing committee reports on home, the panel which he headed for a long time. But less than an hour before the swearing-in function, he was asked to take over the defence portfolio. The home portfolio went to Shivraj Patil.
Mukherjee initially felt somewhat sidelined in the stiff hierarchy of power but soon he would assume immense power—only next to the Prime
Minister in the government-thanks to his towering presence in nearly all groups of ministers. Between 2004 and 2012, every major policy of the UPA government had the imprint of Pranab Mukherjee as he headed dozens of GoMs or Manmohan Singh’s kitchen cabinets.
“Between 2004-2012, Shri Mukherjee was instrumental in spearheading critical decisions of the Government on a range of issues such as Administrative reforms, Right to Information, Right to Employment, Food Security, Energy Security, Information Technology and telecommunication, setting up of UIDAI, Metro Rail, etc through Chairmanship of over 95 Groups of Ministers constituted for the purpose,” reads his official profile in the Rashtrapati Bhavan archive.
He got so engrossed in shaping India’s policies and the GoMs got such prominence that many people started lovingly calling Pradeep Gupta, a fine, upright officer entrusted with his GoM files, as “GoM Gupta”.
And it was these GoMs that highlighted his prowess to solve intricate problems and structural issues and help him consolidate his brand as an ace troubleshooter for the UPA. He was entrusted with delicate political situations—the demand for Telangana in the early UPA years, the threat of a DMK withdrawal, Anna Hazare’s movement for a Lokpal—and critical policy issues such as financing Air India, setting up a Direct Benefit Transfer mechanism framework and many pieces of rights-based legislation, which would ultimately become the hallmark of the UPA’s success story.
It was not an easy task. He handled conflicting views, diverse interests and major ego trips before a GoM or an empowered group of ministers would arrive at a decision. Things would often get out of hand. During a GoM meeting on Air India, a furious minister stood up and announced his resignation, leaving everyone in the room speechless. Mukherjee held the minister’s hand and announced a break for 15 minutes. After the meeting reassembled, the proceedings went on smoothly.
To be sure, there is an indelible imprint of Pranab Mukherjee in the world’s largest unique identity programme, the Aadhaar framework. Even as UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani enjoyed excellent rapport with both Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, it was Mukherjee who gave him the crucial administrative and policy backing in the UIDAI versus NPR tussle. Mukherjee never learnt how to use a computer but he had the vision of a technology-driven unique identity network that would one day change the landscape of India’s targeted welfare programmes and a large part of income tax and other financial structures.
Manmohan Singh’s success as the finance minister had much to do with the political support of PV Narasimha Rao. As Prime Minister, many of his flagship programmes and policies found administrative and political backing of Pranab Mukherjee. Mukherjee got so used to spending hours browsing files that after he was nominated as President, P Chidambaram rightly predicted that he would get bored in the highest office.