Mani: Nothing
Can Stop An Idea!
By Harish
Bijoor
Mani Shankar Aiyar must be a very
difficult man to manage. His views are strong, his backbone is rigid, and his spirit
is passionate. The ex-diplomat and current politician is a writer to boot as
well. A writer with a style all
his own. Strong, contentious and loaded with vitriol and thought.
“A Time of Transition”, a near
400-page collection of his columns from the Indian Express, spans a set of writing
years from 1996 to 2004, a time–range he prefers to brand as a time of
transition, from Rajiv Gandhi to the 21st century.
Is he a fawning and adoring Rajiv
Gandhi Congressman type? Adoring, he is. Fawning, most certainly not. Not
really, as he is all ready to discuss his “boss, mentor and friend”(as he
describes him), with all his flaws and chinks, as he traces the recent
political history of India as it unfolds in the years laid out.
Mani looks at India and its
polity centre-stage. He looks at it through the nuggets of his columns as
someone who is out there in the play-field of prurient and patient politics.
Never mind the position he holds, there is plenty of open-ness and plenty of candor.
One really wonders how his party ever let him write on.
Mani comes through stark naked,
as a lovable guy who calls a shovel a shovel. There is a process to his
columns.
His columns endear him to you
first very refreshingly. In a world of politics which typically hides itself
behind the whiter-than-white Khadi kurtas, Mani Shankar Aiyar is the bold
‘Tambram’ who is willing to write of jiving(with his wife) on the dance floor
in “regulation khadi-kurta pyjama” at The Haystack in Goa with the Suresh
Kalmadi couple, just as the Congress party is hearing of its decimation at the hustings
(Circa 1996).
Having endeared himself with his
candor and open-ness, Mani will then tell you clearly through his writings that
he is a wordsmith par excellence. His every word, tone and tenor of narration
is carefully chosen. And that’s a
second way he makes for a loyal readership of his columns.
As you then read on, you realize
this guy is really the thinker whose time had really come. In hindsight he is
really the guy his political bosses should have listened to. Would India and
its development oriented politics be of a different color altogether if that
were to be?
There is nothing outside the tapestry
of comment of this diplomat turned politician. The book is packed with issues that relate to the Constitutional
polity of India, the Congress party at large, Chief Election Commissioners who
came and went (the column on TN Seshan is titled,” See you later, alligator”)
Panchayati Raj, Enron, and scores of issues that touched India in these years
of transition.
The politics of India at times
puts you off the politician at large. The khadi-kurta, the regulation white (as
if to say that I am whiter than them all), the benign listening façade and the
“I am with you” charade at play puts one off the politician mostly. There is
little trust and lots of political cynicism about the politician at large. When
you however encounter an ‘un-politician politician’ like Mani, one changes
track.
Mani Aiyar at the end of reading
this book has just added one more fan to his following. I have never ever read
his columns. This is my first, thanks to this compilation. I will now continue
to read him and look forward to him as a thinker whose time has come.
“Nothing can stop an idea whose
time has come”. Mani Shankar Aiyar
is one such idea himself. Sadly stopped. More often than not.
And that’s the loss I will bemoan
for now.
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Harish Bijoor is a
Brand-strategy specialist and CEO,
Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.
Twitter.com/harishbijoor
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