The Minority Report
Last week Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi resigned from the Cabinet after his Rajya Sabha tenure ended. Technically, he could have stayed on for another six months as there is a grace period in place to ensure he gets another nomination. But the fact that his resignation was accepted, indicates that the Prime Minister has other plans for him. Interestingly, the PM had singled out Naqvi for praise during his last Cabinet meeting, which is a sure sign that he has definitely not fallen from grace, as perhaps his other Muslim colleague Shahnawaz Hussain, had before he was rehabilitated in the Bihar Cabinet. Speculation has it that Naqvi could be nominated as the NDA’s candidate for Vice President for the affable former Cabinet minister and sometime scriptwriter enjoys cross party goodwill. He also has experience on his side, having been a minister in the previous Vajpayee government as well. Other options include a governorship—some see Naqvi heading towards the Valley as the LG (in which case, Manoj Sinha, the current LG, could make a return to the Union Cabinet). Other names doing the rounds for Vice President include Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and former Governor Najma Heptullah, but Naqvi’s name has gained currency in recent days. As for the man himself, he is quite sanguine about his prospects, content to face whatever destiny has in store. While announcing his resignation, he said with his traditional rhetorical flourish: “Sitaron se aage jahan bhi hain, abhi waqt ke imtihan aur bhi hain (there are many challenges in life).” He could well have added: “Yahan ab mire razdan aur bhi hain (there are enough who wish well for me).” Coincidentally, two other Muslim Rajya Sabha MPs resigned at the same time as Naqvi, both M.J. Akbar and Syed Zafar Islam as their term had ended as well. This in effect means that currently there are no Muslim MPs in either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha from the 325 MPs that come from the BJP. However, from all the Muslim faces in the BJP, it is Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who stands the tallest, for the other two resignations barely made any headlines.
The BOOK LAUNCH
Film actress and director Deepti Naval has recently come out with an evocative book where she talks about her early childhood and growing up in Amritsar. The memoirs called, “A Country Called Childhood” are published by David Davidar of Aleph Book Company. The book, which focuses on Deepti’s growing up years in Amritsar, was released by Sharmila Tagore at a high profile launch in the capital, organised by Kitaab, a subsidiary of the Prabha Khaitan Foundation. The conversation was moderated by former editor Kaveree Bamzai and had Deepti’s school friend, Kiran Bedi in the audience. Dedicated to her parents, the pages reveal a childhood that could belong to any middle class girl growing up in small town India—the joys of living in a joint family, watching movies at the local Talkies (theatres), having a crush on Rajesh Khanna and copying Sharmila Tagore, the existential dilemmas of what career to follow—with Deepti it was either she would become an actress or a nun. But the most interesting were the stories of her paternal grandparents. Bauji was a very well-known lawyer as well as a hard-core member of the Sangh Parivar. In fact, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee stayed with them at their Amritsar house before he went to Jammu on that last fateful visit. However, Bibiji (grandmother) was a Congresswoman, so much so that the two contested an election from their respective parties. The mornings would be spent canvassing at the Gandhi Maidan but the evenings would end with both on the same dinner table, conversing amicably. Now isn’t there a lesson here for the times we live in?
The Veiled Dig
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a thinly disguised dig at Congress leader P. Chidambaram when he took stock of the speed with which online payments and digital wallets had taken off. Speaking at a public meeting the PM recalled, “When we introduced this scheme in Parliament, one ex-finance minister raised many issues with it. He said that people did not have mobile phones, how would they use it?” And then went on to add, “He is highly learned. The problem with highly learned people is that they do a lot of analysis.” Clearly, the PM’s remarks were aimed at Chidambaram but what is interesting is the reference to the former finance minister as being “highly learned”. This is not the first time the PM has taken a dig at Chidambaram’s Harvard degree, for earlier too he had commented that some people “do Harvard while others do hard-work”. On another note, what’s with the PM and former finance ministers—for another ex finance minister, Yashwant Sinha seems to be in the PM’s bad graces for a while now.