'Pliant' Patil, India's next
president By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Pratibha Patil is poised
to become India's next president in voting this
Thursday. Her victory is a foregone conclusion;
the numbers are in her favor to make her India's
first female head of state.
A former deputy Speaker of
the Upper House of India's Parliament, the Rajya
Sabha, Patil, now 72, was a practicing lawyer
before she joined politics. She has held five
consecutive terms as a legislator in her home
state of Maharashtra and has
held
ministerial portfolios several times. And she has
been governor of Rajasthan for the past three
years. Besides that, she has been involved in
social work, founding banks, colleges and schools
for the poor and economically disadvantaged
women.
But skeletons have
been tumbling out of the Patil family cupboard
ever since the ruling United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) coalition put her up as its candidate in the
presidential race.
The president is
elected in a secret ballot by an electoral college
made up of state and federal lawmakers. If the
president were directly elected, incumbent A P J
Kalam, who is known as the "People's President",
given his immense popularity, would have won hands
down. Kalam pulled out of the race after the UPA
and the previous ruling National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) could not agree on fielding him for
another term.
The Patil family has been
accused of nepotism, murder and fraud. Her husband
Devisinh Shekawat's name was linked to the suicide
of a schoolteacher seven years ago. One of her
brothers is connected to the murder of a Congress
party leader in Patil's hometown, Jalgaon. The
latter had apparently drawn the attention of the
party leadership to the brother's misuse of funds.
Patil is said to have protected her brother from
the murder charge.
Then, a cooperative
bank Patil helped set up in 1974 to assist women
went under when her relatives - the bank's main
beneficiaries - failed to repay loans. A sugar
mill she founded went under too. The mill owes the
equivalent of US$4 million to the bank from which
it availed loans.
Patil's supporters
argue that it is unfair to hold her responsible for
the crimes of her relatives. Indeed, these
charges could well prove to be baseless, being leveled
by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),
which has a strong interest in undermining the
ruling coalition's candidate.
Indeed, it
is party politics that is behind the BJP's ugly
smear campaign against Patil. These allegations
have, however, been around for a while. Yet the
BJP did not rake them up when she was appointed
governor of Rajasthan - a BJP-ruled state - three
years ago. It is only when her name came up as the
presidential candidate that the BJP chose to stir
the pot.
Incidentally, the BJP's candidate
for president - Bhairon Singh Shekawat, the
current vice president - is no better. The
Congress has accused him of sheltering his son in
a case of illegal land acquisition. Shekawat's
dealings, it seems, go back several decades.
If the slush from the BJP's mudslinging is
sticking on Patil it is because she has not
clarified issues but chosen to remain silent. It
is the Congress party itself that has batted in
her defense. Her silence, while not proof of her
guilt, is suggestive of it. Even if the
allegations are simply part of the BJP's campaign,
Patil cannot distance herself from the public
statements she has made.
As Maharashtra's
health minister during the Emergency (1975-77),
Patil issued a statement in the State Assembly
endorsing a proposal seeking to make "family
planning" (birth control) compulsory for all
citizens. The government would take "appropriate
steps" to ensure that all citizens adopted family
planning measures she said, adding, "We are also
thinking of forcible sterilization for people with
anuvaunshik ajar [hereditary diseases]."
Patil has never apologized for endorsing forcible
sterilization. Neither has she indicated that she
has rethought that contentious view.
A
month ago, Patil said in a public gathering that
veiling of Indian women began during Mughal rule
to protect them from Muslim invaders. This is an
argument that India's Hindu right has often made,
which has been refuted by leftish historians.
Patil, who called for an end to the purdah
system (purdah is a veil but it also refers
to exclusion of women from the public space),
incidentally covers her own head demurely with her
sari pallav (the free end of the sari).
While campaigning, Patil claimed she had a
"divine premonition of greater responsibility"
coming her way after speaking to her late
spiritual guru. "The future president of India
speaks to dead people," wrote Indian Express
columnist Tavleen Singh, pointing out that it is
"very worrying that India's first citizen should
represent the obscurantist and weird underbelly of
the Hindu religion".
But Patil is not
alone in looking to mediums and "godmen" for ideas
and inspiration. The vast majority of India's
politicians - even some among the "godless
Marxists" - would hesitate to take a step without
consulting their astrological and spiritual
masters. She is being hauled over the coals now
ironically by the BJP.
So couldn't the UPA
find a less controversial person for the top post?
Is this the best the coalition could come up with?
Names the Congress had suggested were turned down
by the left and vice versa. After running through
a long list of names, the Congress came up with a
name that the left couldn't turn down - that of
Patil, who has sound secular credentials.
But what made the Congress suggest the
name of a regional leader for the presidency.
Surely there are other women with stronger secular
credentials than Patil in a country of a billion
plus. It appears that what worked in Patil's favor
was her proximity to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress
president and leader of the UPA coalition. Patil
is seen by the Congress as a "loyalist", that is,
loyal to the Nehru-Gandhi family, an essential
qualification for anyone hoping for an appointment
under Congress rule.
The Nehru-Gandhis have always favored loyal presidents.
Zail Singh (1982-87) began his tenure with the
declaration that if "Indira-ji so wanted," he
would "happily pick up the broom and sweep the
floor". And Patil has stood by the family through
thick and thin. Her critics jeer that she looked
after former premier Indira Gandhi's kitchen in
the difficult period after the death of Indira's
son Sanjay in 1980.
Every phase of this
presidential election has been ugly. If the
process of choosing candidates left the
reputations of several senior ministers as well as
that of incumbent Kalam seriously muddied, the
vicious campaign for the two candidates has
severely undermined the stature of the presidency.
India's presidency is largely ceremonial.
But in an era of fragmented mandates, hung
parliaments and coalition governments the
president plays an important role. In the event of
a close verdict it is he or she who makes the
decision as to who gets the first chance to try
their hand at government formation - the
single-largest party or the single-largest
coalition. In such situations it would help to
have a friend in the president's seat.
The
2007 presidential poll is not just about choosing
India's 12th president for the next five years. It
is about the general election in 2009. It was
bitterly fought because of the high stakes
involved. With a "loyal Patil" in the Rashtrapathi
Bhavan (India's presidential palace), the Congress
will be hoping for a leg up in 2009.
The
UPA coalition has emerged stronger from the
presidential contest not only because its
candidate will be the next president but also
because it managed to break the opposition
alliance. Its choice of Patil, a Maharashtrian,
compelled the Shiv Sena, a pro-Maharashtrian party
and an important BJP partner, to break away from
its partners in the NDA. This is likely to result
in a more formal parting of ways between the BJP
and the Sena - a major coup for the UPA.
So what can India expect from its
president in the next five years? A pliant
president?
India's presidents have on
occasion sprung surprises. President Zail Singh
was willing to wield a broom if Indira Gandhi
ordered him to, and he did swear in her son Rajiv
as her successor in 1984, departing from
established procedures. But when Rajiv treated him
with scant respect, Zail Singh asserted himself,
and relations between the president and prime
minister were strained.
Patil, who comes
to the top post with a strong record on social
welfare, just might actually act to empower women.
Perhaps she will spring a surprise yet.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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