Sachin Pilot in the eye of the storm

JYOTI MALHOTRA
Tete-a-tete with Sachin Pilot, The Telegraph, June 2007


Sachin Pilot’s having a baby next month, but that did not deter this first-time-father-to-be from spending long days and nights ``with his people,’’ in the first face-off between the Gujjar and Meena communities all of last week.

But as the inter-caste war spread from nearby Rajasthan into Delhi, it not only captured the attention of the capital’s power politicians, but also became the cynosure of television nationwide, thus making the event properly respectable.

In the end, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, in yellow chiffon sari and matching yellow rubber band, was forced to sit right next to Col. Bainsla, a former armyman and the new face of the agitating Gujjar community, while she accepted that dialogue was the way ahead. She, a former royal, had been left with no option but to break bread with a man seeking demotion to tribal status, a category so low in the Constitution calculus that it’s impossible to go any lower. But that’s another story.

All of last week, young Sachin was in the eye of the storm, the stubble of a few unshaven days keeping pace with starched handspun, as he had discussions with M K Narayanan, Shivraj Patil, Rajnath Singh and Sonia Gandhi, not necessarily in that order.

Anyone else, both older and in his age-group, would give their eyeteeth to have met the pantheon of Delhi’s deities face to face, that too in one week. Meanwhile, the caste violence ensured that he got Z-status security, a privilege very few in all of India receive.

To be recognised as the face of his parliamentary constitutency, Dausa, as well as a key Gujjar leader who sought the middle path in this violent fracas – certainly, the enormous media exposure is good for Sachin’s political career.

But Pilot remains undisturbed. For someone as young as him, to recognise the terribly fleeting character of both power and adulation, to sift the ground beneath his feet and hold on to the few things that matter, is impressive.

How he hates being called, ``young,’’ though. Its true that at age 26, Sachin became the youngest MP in Parliament when he won Dausa in 2004. But if ``youth’’ is a pejorative in the hands of those aging gracefully, then Pilot will have none of it.

Of course he doesn’t say any or all of the above. Rajesh and Rama Pilot’s son seems well and truly brought up, although he does lack the easy affection and earthiness of his father. Sachin, on the other hand, has just the right quote for every one and every situation. He says what he means, and he means what he says. It’s a little overwhelming, this complete control at age 29 – and just a trifle depressing.

Perhaps the steel armour is necessary. Not only because politics opens you to every other jibe and insult, all in the name of the people. But even when Sachin married the utterly lovely peaches-and-cream Sara Abdullah, grand-daughter of Sheikh Abdullah himself, and his in-laws had a few unkind things to say, he just clamped up. It was the biggest love story of the time, Sara and Sachin looking adoringly at each other on the front pages of the national dailies. That was it, though. Not a word against, about, or why his in-laws were doing what they did.

``Look, she’s from a political family. Whatever happened then, happened. Lets just say today that her family is very happy that we are very happy together,’’ said Sachin.

Clearly, he wants to return to the Gujjar story.

``Those flashy young men with gold chains who have `Gujjar’ emblazoned across their Scorpios that you see driving around the city, are not representative of the Gujjar community,’’ Pilot says, keenly aware that the Gujjar stereotype has got bad press over the years.

He points out that a majority of the people from the community are so poor they haven’t been able to even participate in the fruits of development. The way the Gujjars see it, says Sachin, caste quotas are a sure way to get somewhere, even for a few. If the Meenas have access to social and economic uplift because of their Scheduled Tribe status, then the Gujjars would naturally want to go the same route.

``A Meena boy gets into IIT with 34 per cent, while a Gupta boy (of higher caste) with 94 per cent cant get admission,’’ says Pilot, arguing that in an unfair world, caste quotas are the equivalent of the goose that lays golden eggs.

His stint at the Wharton business school in the US, a top college in management worldwide, he says, taught him the value of merit. However, in India, since there are no real alternatives to education and employment, ``caste reservations are a tool given by the Constitution’’ and they must be fully used.

Still, Sachin has not hesitated to go beyond the quota overdrive and use other tools to improve Dausa’s lot. He begged Railway minister Lalu Yadav to visit his constituency and sanction a new train from there. He persuaded the Highways authority to build a 65-km stretch from Delhi to Dausa. From patwari to PM, says Sachin, he’s been there, done that.

When his father died in a road accident in 2000, everyone agreed that it was a life cut too short. Rajesh Pilot’s dash and daring had made him a key member of the Congress vanguard. The father’s reputation for doing things differently was soon to devolve upon the son.

So when he returned from Wharton, and the party offered him the Dausa seat, which after his father’s death had been held by his mother, Sachin said yes to politics. He was only 26 years old. He won by more than a lakh votes.

He bristles at the suggestion that in the republic of India, dynasties are increasingly becoming the norm, not the exception. Jitin Prasada, Milind Deora, Sandeep Dikshit, Manvendra Singh, Naveen Jindal, one by one, we count the young MPs off our fingers. (Pilot doesn’t even mention Rahul Gandhi.) Pilot points out that all of them are from the upper castes.

So what was the point of this exercise, I wonder? Pilot’s read my mind so he answers triumphantly, ``I am the only one who is not.’’

At least there’s a chink in the reserve. His words spilling into each other, Sachin tells me that when he accompanied his father or mother to election meetings, it was par for the course. But as a candidate, fighting for himself, every single vote mattered. He visited every village and met everyone he possibly could.

``My father died in 2000. That was a long time ago. Nobody remembers you from then. Nobody gives a rat’s ass if you don’t win. Your father’s constituency is not your fiefdom. The good old days are over. I don’t have any blue blood in me. The bar is so high these days that you have to beg and plead for every vote,’’ he says.

A dynasty, he adds, can only work in a democracy if it gets a stamp of approval every five years. You must be the better alternative. You cannot take the people for granted.

As for the Congress loss in UP, its time for the party to go back now and rebuild bridges, lay the foundation stone, generally reengineer the full political project. But even the remotest suggestion that the Congress party, alias Rahul Gandhi, should set its house in order and Sachin shrinks as if he’s been burnt by the comment.

``I am just a humble soldier in a mighty organisation, and that is the Congress party,’’ he says.

Still, as his father’s son, Sachin has honed his strategies for political survival rather well. A Rajesh Pilot ritual, an annual `kisan’ lunch at home in the winter sun, with makki ki roti and saag, gurh, three kinds of chutney, great curd and the crème de la crème of the Delhi press corps in attendance, all waxing eloquent about the utter simplicity of it all, has made young Pilot a capital poster boy.

Back in the office, the dynasty lives. Photographs of Rajesh Pilot with Indira Gandhi dominate the office walls. There’s another one of his mother with Indira Gandhi too, but still in bubble-wrap. As well as a frame full of his own shooting medals, trap, skeet and rifle. Both photo-frames are still waiting to be hung. Sachin has been a shooting champ in his time.

So what’s the next target ? To keep pace with the demands of his constituency, to deal with development projects, funds, new trains, roads…Sachin’s earnest political correctness is beginning to ooze.

But Sachin is his father-in-law’s son-in-law too. ``This may sound like I am showing off,’’ he says, ``but my people in Dausa do believe I am special.’’ When he got married and people began to say all kinds of things about Sara and Sachin, Dausa welcomed the young bride as if she were their daughter. ``It doesn’t matter who you married, they said to me. She is your wife, and that’s all that matters to us,’’’ he added.

ENDS