After The Break: Elixir for a long political life? Loyalty

I don’t know what it is that drove me to meet Sis Ram Ola. I guess, I was feeling restless since I wasn’t in Uttarakhand and I needed to do something, anything. It’s just that I couldn’t get my head around the fact that the new labour and employment minister was starting out at the age of 85.

What amazed me was that according to Election Commission data, at 35 years of age, I was over the hill as a voter in India. Fifty three per cent of voters were younger than me, so I wanted to know if I found the idea of having a new leader who was 50 years older than me totally outlandish, what were 20 year olds thinking?

I wanted to see for myself how this low-key Congress leader worked, and to be totally honest, I wanted to see if he had his wits around him. I watched his slow gait during the oath-taking ceremony and I wanted to see if he could quickly handle all the files, if he could hear his staff members well, if he could take meetings efficiently.

Perhaps the basis of my spirit of inquiry sounds ageist, that I’m part of that entire bandwagon that chants ‘youth, youth, youth’ as if it’s some elixir of success. But I really am not. In fact, as a political reporter, I’ve always found veterans so much more interesting. They’ve all been there, done that, they have fought and won and more importantly, they’ve all fought and lost many times over, so they are much more grounded than their younger peers.

When you interview an older leader from any party, they’re not looking over their shoulder. They’re assured, they speak their mind and actually, I think the big ideas in politics only come from the older guys.

Maybe, the younger ones are just too restrained by our political system to be trendsetters and maybe, they know all too well that if they start voicing their ‘big ideas’, the veterans will just squelch them for acting too big for their boots. Whatever their limitations, the hype about Young MPs which we saw in 2004, has largely been a disappointment.

But when you drop somebody from the Cabinet in 2009 and tell reporters that “they’re a bit too old now for the job” and need to do something less demanding like be the deputy chief of the Lok Sabha, it’s a bit rich to bring them back to the hot seat in 2013!

And why? Because you’re desperate in Jhunjhunu for Jat votes. First of all, does making someone a minister really motivate the people from that region to vote for the party? Does it really excite party workers and make them work much harder?

Then why is it that the Congress party has so many tall leaders from Madhya Pradesh - Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia; and from Uttar Pradesh who I can’t even begin to count, but the party’s performance in these states fails to improve? No, it isn’t very convincing and the truth is that each and every appointment to the Cabinet was only done on considerations of caste and regional representation.

But, I’m digressing. I was only fascinated by one of them and that’s why I went to see him. I found him sitting with his dark glasses on. Having heard a snide rumour about his failing vision, I gingerly asked,   (They’re for the sun). I thought it would be impertinent to point out that we were indoors, sitting away from the sun.

The great-grandfather, whose son is also a Rajasthan minister, didn’t have too much trouble hearing me, I have to admit. He walked slow but sure and seemed to have a fantastic memory. The labour and employment secretary met him and when he told him he’d worked with him earlier as a district magistrate, I was stunned because Ola recalled just where and which year. I didn’t see him signing files so I cannot vouch for his efficiency with that, but yes, he wasn’t as frail as he’d seemed on TV.

Here’s the real problem though — Sis Ram Ola left his previous ministry under a cloud, with complaints from certain quarters. That’s all forgotten. Forget allegations, no one heard any suggestion of any one of the new ministers actually deserving their new job.

No, it’s all about Jats or Brahmins or Telengana. No wonder, we are obsessing about Ola being 85 and no wonder when I went to see him, he literally bowed before pictures of the Gandhi family with folded hands. Loyalty, certainly, can get you places or bring you back from one foot in the grave.