On my terms: from the grassroots to the corridors of power by Sharad Pawar tiger publishing; Price: Rs.699; Pages: 264

One of post-independence India’s most durable and dominant figures in national politics is Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar. In his long — and still enduring — career as an MP/MLA which began in 1967, Pawar has never lost an election from Baramati (pop. 54,415) or its assembly segments. Perennially in the heart of politics and action, he has served four terms as chief minister of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state — and in key ministries at the Centre, including defence and agriculture, for over a decade.

After finishing this chronologically complete but typically non-argumentative and non-recriminatory autobiography, the conclusion of this reviewer is that Pawar, now in the twilight of his political career, (narrowly) failed to make it to the prime minister’s office in Delhi for precisely the very qualities which facilitated his rise in politics: his patient listening, consensus-building skills and genuine commitment to democracy. These rare traits were interpreted as lack of will, manipulative capability and not enough steel required to get to the top of the political firmament.

Born into a large family, the ninth of 11 children of Sharadabai and Govindrao Pawar, the latter a senior officer in the Neera Canal Cooperative Society, Baramati, Sharad had the good fortune of being blessed with a relatively well-educated (class VII) and politically active mother who, he readily acknowledges, was “the biggest influence” in his life. By this account, Sharadabai who became the first woman to be elected to the Pune Local Board, was a woman of strong political convictions who was a life-long member of the Left-wing Peasants & Workers Party (PWP) despite her husband, as also Sharad, opting to join the Congress.

Modestly schooled in Baramati, Sharad received his higher education in the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce, Pune, where he readily confesses, his prime focus was on extracurricular activities as an elected students’ representative who organised debates, theatre performances and conducted elections in Pune University’s colleges.

In 1958, he registered himself as an active member of the Congress party and attracted the attention of Yeshwantrao Chavan, a much-admired politician who two years later, when the Bombay Presidency was divided into the two states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, was appointed the first chief minister of the latter.

Given his political activism and organisational abilities, within a short period Sharad was elected secretary of the Pune Youth Congress, secretary of the western Maharashtra youth wing and in 1962, president of the Maharashtra Youth Congress. Five years later, despite stiff opposition, he was elected MLA for the first time from Baramati. This launched his political career, establishing him as a grassroots and party worker, which impressed the Congress leadership.

In 1972 at age 32, Pawar was inducted into the state cabinet. Having built a solid foundation, Pawar was on his way to becoming one of the country’s most influential political leaders of the next three decades.

It needs to be noted that Pawar’s rise in Maharashtra politics began at the time of Indira Gandhi’s political ascendancy in New Delhi after India’s decisive victory over Pakistan in the Bangladesh liberation war. But shortly after the war, things began to go wrong for Mrs. Gandhi and the country when she was found guilty of electoral malpractice by the Allahabad high court, which prompted her to declare the Emergency in 1975. Although Pawar and his mentor Y.B. Chavan, then a Union minister, were uncomfortable with this “extreme step”, neither of them resigned their offices, with Pawar focusing “all my attention on the state ministries which I held, especially agriculture”.

After the Emergency was lifted in early 1977 and Congress and Mrs. Gandhi suffered a humiliating defeat in the general election that followed, its successor Janata Party government was “unstable from the start”. Then began a period of instability in Maharashtra as well, with the upshot being a Progressive Development Front (PDF) — a coalition of the original Congress (S), Janata Party and the PWP — led by Pawar forming the government. At 38, Sharad Pawar was appointed chief minister of the country’s most industrially advanced state.

The political challenges of the period 1980-2000 are chronologically, even if fleetingly, described in On My Terms. Indeed one of the pluses of this memoir is that it provides a complete abridged history of the post-Emergency era culminating in the swearing-in of the P.V. Narasimha Rao-led Congress government which initiated the historic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991-92. Pawar was appointed Union defence minister, but within a year after the Shiv Sena-engineered anti-Muslim riots in Mumbai in March 1993, he was back as chief minister of Maharashtra for the fourth time. Just in time, because within days of taking charge, Mumbai was rocked by a series of bomb blasts which, but for Pawar’s proactive leadership, could have destabilised the country’s financial capital and indeed the economy.

In the general election of 1996, Pawar stood as a Lok Sabha candidate from Baramati and shifted his attention to national politics. During the next three years, India was ruled by several shaky coalition governments even as Sonia Gandhi was elected Congress president. Admitting there was “little warmth” between them, Pawar describes how he and P.A. Sangma were out-manoeuvred and expelled from the Congress over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin issue. But ever-resilient, Pawar and Sangma promoted the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) which inevitably, was invited to join the Congress-led UPA I government after the Congress unexpectedly won the 2004 general election. Pawar chose and was given, the Union agriculture ministry and served for ten long years in the UPA I and UPA II governments (2004-2014).

No Indian politician of the 21st century was closer to India Inc or had more faith in private enterprise than Pawar as demonstrated in a refreshingly forthright chapter in this memoir titled ‘Lavasa and Windmills’. But unfortunately, Pawar also lacks strong ideological conviction. Thus he was — and presumably remains — equally at ease with Nehruvian socialism and Narasimha Rao’s liberalisation. Accustomed to ministerial office from a young age, he was content to drift along with the ruling establishment without being driven to giving it shape and direction. In the end Pawar’s legendary listening skills, agreeableness and ability to forge compromises have cost him — and the country — dearly.

Dilip Thakore

 

Environment science primer

Naturally: Tread Softly on The Planet by Vikram Soni harper collins; Price: Rs.399; Pages: 280

“Whatever I dig from thee, O Earth, May that have quick growth again. O purifier, may we not injure thy vitals or thy heart” — Atharva Veda (12.1.35) To what extent is the paradigm of development we have chosen in recent times compliant with this prophetic advice? Do modern technologies respect the need to replenish what we exploit? This thought-provoking book attempts to provide answers to these crucial questions.

The author spent his childhood in the Kumaon hills of the Himalayas. This perhaps explains his passion for environment conservation and activism for protection of Delhi’s Aravalli ridge. Such threats to natural forms and features motivated him to explain the chronology and science of evolution, and the type of human interventions that could upset the delicate equilibrium that supports life on Planet Earth.

In 1995, while a resident of Vasant Vihar, Delhi, Vikram Soni witnessed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) using bulldozers to uproot trees and dig earth out from the Aravalli ridge that cuts across the city. When government agencies violate the law of the land, the only way out for citizens is to seek judicial intervention. Soni and a few other activists were at the forefront of the legal action prompting the Delhi high court to issue an interim order restraining the authority from vandalising the ridge.

Nevertheless in pursuit of ‘development’ and fully supported by the state government, DDA soon came up with an ambitious plan to construct a number of star hotels on the ridge. Other government agencies followed suit and started constructing residential colonies on the residual portion. With the help of the best legal advice and counsel they progressively got a foothold on the ridge. In environmental litigation, the law’s delay works in favour of defendants and of the 640 hectares of the ridge, only 223 hectares was finally notified as the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, in addition to another 100 hectares of water body conserved by the defence authorities.

The book moves on to broader ecology lore, describing how life evolved on Planet Earth over three-four billion years. Soni painstakingly explains that all life resides largely within a narrow band, stretching from a few kilometres under the sea to a few kilometres over Earth’s surface. It is Earth’s atmosphere that acts as a cushion, absorbing solar radiation and delivering just that much as is required to sustain life. The planet and life that exists on it today are the outcome of an evolutionary process that rests firmly on a set of well-defined laws of nature.

The human race is but a minuscule part of a myriad species that inhabit the earth. The removal or addition of a single species at a given location can throw the ecosystem off-balance with catastrophic results. The author exemplifies this by citing examples of the difficulty of adapting to changed ecological habitats.

In Australia, the introduction of the European rabbit — a prolific breeder — as a game animal in the Australian grasslands, resulted in the species multiplying rapidly and taking over the grasslands, depriving other species of food and habitat. Similarly, the Australians introduced the South American cane toad to prey on beetles which were destroying sugarcane. The beetles proved to be cleverer. They moved up the cane stalk beyond the reach of toads, and the latter in the absence of natural predators in that part of Australia, multiplied out of control introducing plant and soil toxicity with disastrous results. In both cases, the government had to resort to highly questionable methods to exterminate the intruder species.

The second part of the book examines the consequences of human interventions since the Industrial Revolution of the 17th-19th centuries.

Driven by the need to increase food and industrial production, shrink distances by speeding up transport and improving living conditions through large-scale industrialisation and urbanisation, the human race adopted new technologies that exploited scarce minerals which could never be replenished, generated toxic waste that cannot be easily reprocessed, indiscriminately interfered with the carbon cycle that sustained life, and wantonly disrupted the delicately balanced biodiversity networks.

Trouble started when the scale of human consumption overtook productivity of the planet. Large manufacturing facilities, power projects, multi-lane highways, megacities and so on, have disturbed vulnerable ecosystems like water bodies, wetlands and forests, causing local environmental problems. Soni warns that it may take hundreds of years before we can reverse the accelerating impact of global warming, depleting fresh water resources, pollution of air, land, water and the seas, ozone depletion and biodiversity loss.

The third part of the book deals with the dangers confronting humanity in the wake of disruptions of natural evolutionary cycles. Satellite imagery indicates that fresh water sources and ground water aquifers are drying up the world over. Forests rich in biodiversity are disappearing. Toxic pollutants have entered the food chain, affecting the health of human beings on a mass scale.

The fourth and final section looks to the future and suggests a new definition of progress for ecological renewal and a sustainability. Soni advocates technological innovations that are in step with nature. Among the eco-sound suggestions are solar plants in the mountain deserts of Ladakh which can generate over 3,000 megawatts of power to be transmitted to areas where it is required.

This book is an excellent primer on the science of evolution and emerging problems that threaten life as we know it on Planet Earth. Environmental activism is often regarded as “anti-development” and environmental activists are harassed worldwide. This book is a shot in the arm to such prophets encouraging them to save the world from myopic lop-sided ‘progress’. 

E.A.S. Sarma