If you want to serve people, if you want to get your own satisfaction by seeing a smile on the face of a deprived person, then you should make a foray into public policy.
Mani Shankar Aiyar
Mani Shankar Aiyar
MSA: Yes. I was 11 years old when the first general election took place, not quite 11, I was under 11. And I was so excited watching the whole election process. I was at Welham School at the time. I organized an election in my own class. And then when I went to Doon School the following term, we were all told that we should stay inside the main school campus for a debating competition.
And I asked all my peers, you know, 11-year-old boys, “What is debating?”, and none of them knew. Then, we eventually went to the Assembly Hall at the designated hour, and I saw for the first time in my life a debate, and I was so tickled that even today I remember not just the title, which was – ‘The opinion of this house is that we should be allowed to break bounds’, I also
remember the best speech made by a senior boy called P. Gopinath, who later joined the foreign service and then moved on.
So, I discovered before I was 13 years old that what I really wanted to do was get into electoral politics.
But as I'm a Tamil Brahmin refugee from Pakistan, I did not know the language, I didn’t have a place of residence, and I had no antecedents in my family in politics, so I didn't really quite know how to break through, all I knew was I wanted to break through. And when I went to Cambridge, I was very active in the Union there. And, my colleagues included six people who became senior Cabinet Ministers in the British government, and yet one of them who was scheduled to become the Cabinet Minister for Finance, he told an interviewer that I was the best speaker in the Union, and I therefore decided to run for President at the end of my second year when all my opponents were in their fourth year. And, many years later, I learned that Rajiv Gandhi, who was from a different college, had gone among the Indian students and said, 'Look, there's an Indian standing for the President, the least you fellows can do is vote for him.' So, if Rajiv Gandhi started his political life by canvassing for me, then I am ending it by canvassing for him. That is my involvement.
But while I was into English, I asked for special tuition classes with a very famous professor of those times, Mr. Morris and he invited me to have a Sherry with him every Thursday evening. But after a while, I found that he had no convincing answers to my questions. And then later I read a book called “To the Four Winds” by Clare Shreidan in which he describes all the leaders of the Russian Revolution, which also inspired me greatly.
And so, when I appeared for the foreign service exam, not because I wanted to join, but because there was an opening in politics. I did extremely well, if I may say so myself, and yet I was turned down for being a Communist. So then eventually I came back to India and fought my battle, and finally on the 23rd October 1962-63, Jawahar Lal Nehru personally admitted me into the service.
That is the story of how I got into Foreign Service.
In my first posting, I realized I liked politicians and the work they were doing. My last posting was as Consul General in Karachi, where I got to know the entire spectrum of politicians there. I found that they were really what I wanted to be. So, when I came back to India, I didn't see a prospect. Suddenly, Mrs. Gandhi was shot dead, and Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister. After a few months, he invited me to join the Prime Minister's office.
There, he and I hit it off, and at the end of five years, I concluded that if I ever wanted to join politics, this was the opportunity. I also felt that if I stayed on, successive governments would heavily discriminate against me. Additionally, I found that I was not in agreement with the way Indian foreign policy was being conducted, particularly with regard to Pakistan, which really mattered to me for ethical reasons. So, I seized the opportunity at the end of my term with Rajiv Gandhi to make the jump into politics.
Rajiv Gandhi was hopelessly defeated in the 1989 elections, and so I started my life as a politician in the Opposition. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for that family, my predecessor in the Tamil Nadu constituency suddenly passed away. When that opening came, I asked Rajiv Gandhi to let me stand for it, and he eventually fought his way through the Opposition. I fought in seven elections and won only three, but I have to say that in all three instances, the government lasted for 5 years. So, for 15 years, I was in the Lok Sabha. After losing my last election in 2009, I was appointed to the Rajya Sabha, where I served for 6 years, making it a total of 21 years.
But now, at this advanced age, I have contributed a lot to the party and the party, particularly the leadership, which is the Gandhi family, has given that back many times over.
Although I was a foreign service officer and therefore had nothing to do with administration or local administration, I had seen, particularly in Belgium, where I spent six years of my diplomatic career, that they had an excellent local body system. And so even your passport you collected from a local municipality. And now in our system, you apply in Delhi and then they send you to Tamil Nadu and then some policeman walks in at your home there and if you give him 100 rupees, your verification is done. Yeah. However, in the Belgian commune, which typically serves only about 500 families, everyone knows each other, and the Local Council knows you, enabling on-the-spot verification. Additionally, in various other aspects, such as the constabulary that oversees law and order, it's under the control of the municipality, not the central government.
What is more, the city of Brussels, which had only a million inhabitants, which means the number of inhabitants from here to Karol Bagh, that's all that the city is. And yet it's administered by 90 officials and here we divided it into 3 or 4. So you had efficiency and loyalty, you had citizens' concerns being looked at and anyone could walk into the municipal office to report issues, like water not running from their tap. Of course, for some issues, you probably have to hire a plumber yourself, but that's a different matter.
For instance, when it comes to something like a pothole or an uneven surface needing repair, people go and complain because they are just one of 300 families. As a result, the upkeep of the place is extremely good and very attractive. This experience made me a deep believer in
Panchayati Raj. When I was working with Rajiv Gandhi, I was astonished to find that he was as interested, perhaps even more so, in local government issues than I was.
So, I became his principal advisor on this topic. Later, I became India's first-ever Minister of Panchayati Raj. I held this position for five years and was invited all over to talk about local government. In domestic policy, my focus was on Panchayati Raj; in foreign policy, it was Pakistan, stemming from my three-year stay there. I have been back in India for 41 years, and during this time, I have visited Pakistan at least 40 times.
It seems to me that there is a huge constituency for peace in Pakistan, which our foreign policy is not addressing adequately, except during the period of Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership. Therefore, I am a crusader for a peaceful Pakistan. I also believe that instead of being jealous of the Chinese, we should approach them like a concerned neighbor, wondering, ‘There's a conflict in the area, why don’t we talk to the Chinese and deal with them constructively?’
Back in 1960, General Musharraf and I came to India, where we stayed for a week. He offered us a compromise for the northeast, provided we accepted a line of action and control regarding the Siachen issue. But have we ever appointed a district magistrate for that area? How is it managed?
The British policy was one of flexible frontiers in the north. And when we say, ‘Bharat mata ka ek inch nahin denge’ (we will not give an inch of Mother India), what we are actually saying is ‘Victoria mata ka ek inch nahin denge’. It did not originally belong to India, but to Nepal. It was the Anglo-French Treaty that brought the whole of Garhwal into India.
So, what do we mean by 'Northern Frontier'? Therefore, I believe that during Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership, we could have come to a reasonable settlement on this border issue. After all, the Chinese have 14 countries with whom they have borders, they have settled the borders with 12, the only two that are holding up are India and Bhutan and Bhutan is only holding up because India is holding up.
I think it is very silly to get involved with an American strategy which, if it leads to war, will make India the ‘Belgium of the third world’. The war will be fought on Indian soil, and the terrible things that happened in Belgium could be repeated here. That is why I think it is much more sensible to make friends with the Chinese, to regard them not as rivals, but as a role model. We can catch up with them, so why are we behaving in this manner? However, these are not conventional foreign policy views, so I emerged as a rebel after 26 years in the foreign service.
MSA: They are connected with whether the bus should come in the morning, which is what the women want so the children can go to school, or late at night from the town, which is what the men want after they've gotten drunk. So, you listen to what people say and then act according to their
wishes, and this involves getting out. So whether I am from Welhams, Doon, or Cambridge and think I know everything, no, I know nothing. That's why, when I go to a village, I ask them, 'What is it that you are looking for?' and I don't sneer at them. If they say their biggest requirement, as they did, is to have a funeral shed, I accept it.
Why? I used to joke with them — before I realized the importance — that they should ask for what they need to live, not what they need in death. Then I discovered that if a Harijan dies, his body can't be taken through the village, and they have to go along the rice paddy to some distant point where they bury their dead. But what M. N. Srinivas has described as 'Sanskritization', which is taking place in all sections of our society, is that they have their own priest and they want a place where they can place the body, mumble some verses, and then ceremonially lower the body into the grave, and these are called funeral sheds.
And then I found that in all the Harijan bastis that I visited, this request for funeral sheds was common. By name, I became 'Funeral Shed Aiyar'. All over the constituency, as you drove around, you could see signposts on funeral sheds reading ‘Built by Mani Shankar Aiyar’. So, I'm very proud that I gave up all my education, knowledge, and learning to learn from the people.
And yes, there are multiple demands. I’ll give you a very good example. One of the major seaside villages in my constituency is called Poompuhar, and it is the legendary site of the most famous epic in Tamil literature, the 'Golden
It took me nearly 25 years to get the Government of India to build that harbor. But once they built it, other fishing villages to the north of Poompuhar started experiencing erosion. Now, that’s a complex issue. What do I do about it? I can’t dismantle that harbor, but perhaps something could be done, like building another harbor in this village that might prevent the others from eroding. So, I brought the problem to the notice of the government and pointed out that heavy erosion was taking place on the seashore.
And uh, I have walked to the end of the village and said that I bring the problem to your attention. So he is doing something about it, I don’t know what, but I will find out about it when I go there next. Equally, there was a young man who happened to be from another village further along, who was in this village at that time, and he absolutely insisted that I must visit his village too.
And it was a village that was famous for having what pulls me, so I went, and he showed me a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, a plaster of Paris statue that had been damaged, built around 1950 or something, and he asked me to get it replaced. So I contacted the District Magistrate and asked him to replace the statue, after all, it’s of the Father of our nation.
But the plaster of Paris model they got did not look like Gandhi at all, and yet, for them, that is Gandhi. And so, you get multiple problems. Just now, there was a call that came in Tamil to me, and I answered it. I had been to a town in the northern part of my constituency past which a railway line runs, and it’s a temple town and also a commercial center. The railway board had
stopped all trains coming from Chennai or from other points from stopping at 'Sea Drive' to continue. So the Chamber of Commerce gave me a petition saying that they are suffering economically, so please at least get one train coming from Chennai to stop here. So I came back to Delhi, and I spoke to the Chairman of the Railway Board, and just this morning I heard that they have restored all stoppages (except one). So there are practical problems.
And sometimes I feel, I didn’t get a degree in economics to be able to handle this, but I’m doing as best as I can, and I’m not even an MP. So, if you want to serve people, if you want to get your own satisfaction by seeing a smile on the face of a deprived person, then you should make a foray into public policy. Otherwise, if you don’t have this basic compassion, if you want to lord it over there, then maybe you should go into a corporate. That’s where people in business, they're very cruel and they look after themselves, but public policy is about being concerned about people.
MSA: Well, it seems to me from the practical experience of having observed the IAS and the IFS for some 60 years of my life, that there is no skill that can be taught at the undergraduate level that fits you to be a civil servant. There are excellent doctors and engineers who are very good civil servants. There are also excellent doctors and engineers who are completely rotten. I think compassion is the single most important characteristic, and it explains why increasingly the most popular service is the Indian Revenue Service, because then you can take bribes. Therefore, if you don't want to serve people, if you want to serve yourself, then you should go into business.
If you want to serve people, then you should go into Public Policy. Otherwise, you'll just be an exploiter of people, and if you want to be an exploiter, nobody can stop you. But I would hope that if you're drawn to Public Policy, it would be not to serve your own interests, but the very varied interests of others. And because India is a very different country than America, public service in America does not mean the same thing as public service here. Like, there’s nobody in America who’s going to be looking at open defecation. That’s a big problem here. It's only a problem that I came to learn about after I became an MP. So what skills? The skill that is first and foremost: the ability to listen with sympathy to others on problems that are none of your business, and then comes the skill of maneuvering your way through the government system to be able to fulfill at least some of the demands. There are many demands that remain unfulfilled.
Now, I have just come across a problem relating to my last trip to the constituency, which was in April, a consequence of my biggest achievement. There is an island off the coast, which can only be reached by boat. You have to be rowed across the sea to reach that island. The main occupation of the people there is fishing. So, when they catch their fish, they have to bring it back by boat to the port. Then, from the port, they had to take it by bus to get to the nearest town, from where an ISBT bus would take them to the market in Chidambaram.
But the physical distance between Kodiyampalyam, the island, and Chidambaram, the market, is only a couple of kilometers. So, I arranged with Jagdish Tytler, who was the Shipping Minister, to get the road cess fund used for building one bridge. But they needed a second bridge. And then, 20 years later, the DMK government built the second bridge.
So, it's fabulous that for just about a hundred families, I got 2 crore rupees invested in enabling them to reach their market, but there's no upkeep of that road. So now, it is more difficult to go by road than to go by boat. Therefore, my next problem is how to get that road, which is not very used by everybody except the villagers, repaired.
And so I drove on that road, and it was ghastly. It took me about half an hour to cover those two kilometers because the road is in such bad condition. So, I've taken it up with the District Magistrate. But will he do something about it? 'Allah Jaane' (God knows), because the Chidambaram market is in a different district and this guy is in a different district. So, there has to be coordination, but coordination can only be done by the Secretary in Chennai, and the Secretary has other priorities. So, you learn by trial and error, but you'll never learn if you don't have compassion.
What does it matter to me whether those hundred fishermen sell their fish or not? And I know that the passengers object because the fish stink as they go by bus to the market.
MSA: I think in a democracy, politicians think of their own priorities, which come from their interaction. Having decided that this is my priority, the next step is to prepare a proposal. That is where civil servants come in. Civil servants have to research the economics of it, the social consequences, the environmental consequences, and prepare a draft proposal that, as far as possible, addresses all concerns. To the extent that all concerns cannot be addressed, it specifies what are the choices to be made and who will be affected by the choice you make. Then, these proposals go to the cabinet, where a consensus is created among the leading politicians as to what should be a particular policy.
And nowadays, I find, who was the one who thought of food procurement? It is only because we guaranteed that we would take grain, rice, and wheat particularly at a guaranteed minimum support price, that people started growing grain. In Punjab, you had the Green Revolution in wheat, and then Tamil Nadu had it in rice. Then it spread slowly and has now captured all of Rajasthan, Haryana, much of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and even touched Bengal. So, over time, there was a lot of grain and we were storing it. People would sneer, asking what are you storing it for? And yes, it’s true, rats do eat grain. And many times, it is being stored in the open, so the rain damages it. But it is only because we had procured so much that Modi was able to claim, 'hum free ration de rahe hain' (we are giving free rations). 'Tumhara baap ka production hai kya? Humne kiya aur isliye aapke paas aaya' (Is it your father's production? We did it, and that's why
you have it). So, he took whatever he could to his advantage. We have brought electricity over the country. There were some places that didn't have it. So, he provided the last mile connectivity, got one bulb functioning, and said, 'humne kiya hai' (we did it), and people have accepted it.
So, in public policy, you make decisions that you think will be welcomed by a large number of people, but sometimes the decisions are populist. It is, for instance, a very popular decision to pull down the Babri Masjid and build a Ram temple. I think it's wrong. I’m in the minority of one.
So therefore, there is a process for evolving public policy, but whether that decision finally is right or wrong, temporary or permanent, only circumstances will tell. The Americans were completely convinced that the Chinese were a global hegemon. So, when China became a communist country, they adopted the domino theory. They believed the next country to become communist would be Vietnam, followed by Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and then Indonesia.
Meanwhile, they thought Burma and would also fall. So, they felt they had to stop them before these dominos started falling. Thus, they declared war in Vietnam, ultimately killing millions of people, only to return with their tail between their legs. That is a policy process. And you'll be taught in America about their brilliant models, about how their graduates go into the State Department.
The question then is, what do you actually achieve? They've screwed it up in Iraq, in Vietnam, all over the world. What kind of policy is that? Whereas, if you listen to Gandhi, you’d be in a peaceful world. Therefore, there is nothing that is ab initio right or wrong. That is why I emphasized that you don't know whether something is right or wrong, temporary or permanent, until the consequences play out.
You should have the flexibility in public policy to be able to change track or even make a U-turn. However, many governments find it very humiliating to make a U-turn, as it's a confession of having made a wrong decision. So, public policy is also another skill, but I don't want to sanctify it.
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