From cutting chai to cabinet power: The Gadkari I knew then, and now I don't!

Raju Korti
I and Nitin Gadkari were born in the same year, 1957, in the same city, Nagpur, now famously acknowledged, other than for oranges, as the bastion of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Our chosen professions were different, but our paths crossed quite early. I came to know him on first-name terms after he began emerging as a student leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Those were simpler days. I would drop my wife at a nearby bus stop at Shankar Nagar Square, where we would occasionally catch up perchance. There was nothing remotely grand about those encounters. We would share a cutting chai at a ramshackle tea stall, a tapri, exchanging small talk and pleasantries. There was no entourage, no security cordon and certainly no political theatre. He was simply Nitin, an energetic young man making his way in politics.

Extreme left me with Gadkari, book in hand 

Later, after I joined The Indian Express, he invited me to the thread ceremony of his sons at his residence in the Mahal area of East Nagpur. He was as portly then as he became later, given his well-known penchant for gluttony. Yet what struck me was not his girth but his temperament. Gadkari came across as sincere, open to reason, energetic and willing to engage. He was also active and dashing, two essential traits for any politician wanting to make a mark.

He made that mark decisively. True to his grit and political acumen, Gadkari rose from student politics to become an MLA, then an MP and eventually a Union minister. I have watched that journey from close quarters, from the days of the humble student leader to his current stature as the Union Minister for Transport and Highways. Somewhere along that journey of four and a half decades, however, I began to discern a perceptible change in his demeanour and approach.

Gadkari was never, in my assessment, a politician who stood out as an overwhelmingly popular electoral phenomenon. His rise was driven by something else: a reputation for organisational ability, administrative competence, political networking and an image of being committed to exemplary leadership. That combination took him a long way. So did his robust backing from the RSS, which remains an important factor in understanding his political standing even today.

Me speaking at the book release

That backing assumes particular significance against the persistent speculation about a supposed cold war between the Nagpur lobby and the Ahmedabad lobby, shorthand for the respective power centres associated with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah on one side and Nagpur on the other. Whether one accepts every dimension of that speculation or not, Gadkari's continuing relationship with the RSS is a political fact that cannot simply be wished away.

Yet the man I knew seemed to be changing. The once sincere-sounding and sincere-looking Gadkari increasingly appeared, to me, to be full of himself, high-handed and, at times, even arrogant. The transformation was gradual enough to be missed by those who knew him only from public appearances, but visible enough to someone who had encountered him before the trappings of power became so overwhelming.

I saw another glimpse of that transformation last year when Gadkari arrived habitually late, as chief guest at the release of Companion, or Sobati in Marathi, written by my journalist friend Chandrashekhar Velankar and subsequently translated into English by me. We were on the same dais. I am not sure whether, given his current stature, he failed to recognise me or chose not to. I am inclined to believe the latter, because politicians generally know their connections very well and conveniently remember or ignore them according to circumstance, convenience and occasion.

I did not, for my part, make any attempt to display the familiarity of our earlier days. As an accredited journalist, I would occasionally bumped into him at Mantralaya, where we would share tea with other media friends. But at the book release I remained where I was, without attempting to revive an old association merely because the man on the dais had risen spectacularly in stature. Perhaps that was just as well. The lines between us had long been clearly drawn. He was the politician. I was the journalist.

The more troubling transformation, however, was not whether Gadkari recognised me. It was the manner in which political success appeared to have altered his relationship with power, wealth and influence. Alongside his political career, Gadkari also grew as an entrepreneur, most notably through Poorti, the departmental-store venture that later found itself caught in a public storm over alleged financial irregularities. His fluency with seven and eight-digit figures became almost legendary, earning even rival politicians a measure of secret admiration. There was something undeniably impressive about his command of numbers, business and administration.

But somewhere along that progression, I believe he crossed the fine line between confidence and overconfidence. He became brusque. At times he seemed like someone who could not care less. The body language became more assertive, the speech more emphatic, the demeanour less accessible. Confidence, which had once been one of his strengths, increasingly seemed to harden into self-assurance of a different kind.

I have often suspected that both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were uncomfortable with the manner in which the ambitious Gadkari conducted himself after the BJP came to power with a massive mandate in 2014. Publicly, Gadkari always acknowledged that he functioned under the leadership of Modi. Yet he often came across as a self-styled minister who operated substantially on his own writ. I suspect Modi and Shah did not want to ruffle those feathers unnecessarily, partly because of the RSS rider that hung between them. Gadkari marched on regardless, fortified by his firm backing in Nagpur. The discomfort, at least to my reading of the political atmosphere, was palpable.

And then came the latest episode. Gadkari's recent remarks suggesting that he cannot do much work anymore and should make way for someone from the new generation have inevitably set tongues wagging. As happens with almost every politician whose words acquire an inconvenient interpretation, clarifications followed. He made it clear that he had no plans to quit active politics. Technically, that may settle the matter. Politically, it does not.

There is already a perception that Gadkari may have an inkling that an impending Cabinet reshuffle could leave him without a berth and that he may therefore be contemplating a face-saving, dignified exit before the decision is made for him. I do not claim that this is necessarily what is happening. But the perception exists, and politicians of Gadkari's experience know better than most that perceptions themselves can become political facts. For someone who became BJP president, emerged as a virtually confirmed name for the Union Cabinet and occupied one of its most important portfolios, the possibility is both sad and surprising.

As someone who knew him on first-name terms, once I found the episode personally disappointing. As an independent-minded media person, I found it perplexing and, frankly, annoying. This was not the Gadkari I thought he would become. Not that I claim any proprietary interest in his political career. I do not. Our lines were clearly drawn long ago. He was the politician. I was the journalist.

But I remain astonished at the extent to which he has courted unpopularity, including among people in his own party and some of his personal well-wishers. The most striking example is his insistence on ethanol-blended fuel. After creating immense difficulties and confusion for vehicle owners across the country, the manner in which the ethanol issue has been pursued has, in my view, damaged much of the goodwill Gadkari painstakingly accumulated over three decades of political life.

The criticism is not merely about ethanol as an idea. Ethanol blending has legitimate arguments in its favour, including energy security, reduced dependence on imported crude and support for domestic agriculture. The problem is the manner, pace and perceived conflict of interest surrounding its advocacy. What was the need to force such a transition so abruptly, particularly when domestic manufacturing of ethanol-compatible vehicles was not even slated to begin until 2023? A little patience could have prevented much of the chaos.

The allegation made by his critics is that the decision was pushed through with extraordinary haste, with a unilateral decision being taken late in the evening in the expectation of nationwide applause. When the backlash followed, responsibility appeared to move elsewhere, with Hardeep Singh Puri becoming a convenient name in the subsequent political explanation. Whether that characterisation is entirely fair is open to debate, but it illustrates the degree to which Gadkari's image has become vulnerable to suspicion.

That is precisely why the present perception troubles me more than it might trouble someone who had never known the earlier Gadkari. His critics have gone further, drawing an unflattering parallel with Dhritarashtra, whose blind devotion to his son clouded his judgement and brought the situation to what it is today. I would hesitate to make such a sweeping moral equivalence. But there is an uncomfortable political question that Gadkari cannot simply dismiss: when a powerful minister vigorously promotes an industry in which his own sons have business interests, can he reasonably expect the public to remain indifferent to the appearance of a conflict?

His two sons' involvement in the ethanol business has been openly criticised, and many have expressed anguish over what they perceive as a troubling intersection between public policy and private family interests. Whether every allegation made against the family stands scrutiny is another matter. But perception, again, matters enormously in public life.

I do not pretend to live in a political world innocent of vested interests. Show me one politician who has never had a vested interest, who has remained entirely unselfish, pliant when the need arises, or untouched by the moral compromises that accompany the exercise of power. Politics, by its very nature, is rarely an antiseptic profession. My anguish, therefore, is not about Gadkari being a politician who has acquired wealth, influence or ambition. It is about the distance he seems to have travelled from the down-to-earth man I once knew.

There was a time when a cutting chai at a roadside tapri was enough. A young Gadkari could sit down, laugh, exchange pleasantries and talk without the burden of office weighing upon the conversation. He appeared sincere and accessible. He listened. He could disagree without necessarily becoming disagreeable. At the book release last year, I saw something quite different. His speech, his body language and his overall bearing seemed to me to reflect a metamorphosed Gadkari. It was not the man with whom I had once shared laughter and pleasantries over a roadside cup of tea.

Perhaps power does that to people. Perhaps prolonged proximity to authority creates a protective wall around those who wield it. Perhaps success slowly convinces a politician that disagreement is opposition and criticism is envy. Or perhaps I am simply reading too much into a few encounters separated by decades. But the change is difficult for me to ignore.

Gadkari has undoubtedly achieved much. His tenure in the highways and transport ministry has given him an opportunity to leave a substantial infrastructural imprint, and his political journey from Nagpur's student politics to the national stage is, by any measure, remarkable. He has demonstrated administrative energy, political resilience and an entrepreneurial instinct rare in Indian politics. That is precisely why his present predicament is so intriguing.

A politician does not become diminished merely because he leaves office. Nor does retirement necessarily amount to defeat. If Gadkari genuinely believes that the next generation should take over, there would be dignity in saying so plainly and leaving on his own terms. But if retirement is merely a pre-emptive manoeuvre to avoid being dropped in a Cabinet reshuffle, then the grandeur of the gesture begins to look rather different. There is a subtle distinction between choosing one's exit and dressing up an enforced exit as a sacrifice.

I do not know which of the two applies to Gadkari. He alone does. What I do know is the Gadkari I once knew. I remember a young student leader from Nagpur, ambitious but approachable, active and dashing, sitting across a ramshackle tapri and sharing a cutting chai with me. I remember the invitation to his sons' thread ceremony. I remember the occasional tea at Mantralaya with fellow journalists. I remember a man who seemed secure enough in himself to listen.

I also remember the Gadkari I saw last year. Between those two men lie roughly four and a half decades of politics, power, business, success, controversy and changing equations. Somewhere in that long journey, the man who once seemed confident without being overbearing appears, at least to me, to have become increasingly overconfident, high-handed and brusque. That is not an indictment of his entire political career. It is a personal observation born of having seen him before and after power acquired its full weight.

And perhaps that is the hardest truth about politics. The public rarely knows the person behind the politician. Those of us who encountered them before the barricades, security details, official cars and towering offices sometimes get a glimpse of the distance travelled. In Gadkari's case, I have travelled that distance with him, albeit from the other side of the political fence.

I began by sharing a cutting chai with Nitin Gadkari. Today, I watch Union Minister Nitin Gadkari from a distance and wonder what happened to the man who sat beside me at that tapri. The politician may have become bigger. The question is whether, somewhere along the way, the man became smaller.