In a city teeming with sycophants, Manohar Parrikar is the rare Narendra Modi loyalist who can be counted on to give him frank — even critical — counsel. The new Defence Minister from Goa has a mind of his own, and a friendship with Modi that goes back over two decades when they were in the RSS together.
In early September 2013, a fortnight before Modi was officially declared BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Parrikar gave me an interview for The New York Times’ India blog. He backed Modi’s nomination, but also called the 2002 Gujarat riots a “blot on Modi’s career”. Delhi’s media went into a tizzy over the quote, painting this as another example of a party still divided over Modi’s candidature.
The morning after the interview was published, when I reached Parrikar’s office-in-residence in Panjim’s well-heeled Altinho neighbourhood, his aides were in damage-control mode. The media was calling persistently, looking for a few more juicy quotes on Modi. The RSS was offended: in the same interview Parrikar had said that while he was a Hindu nationalist, he wouldn’t “take out a sword and kill Muslims”. The state’s Christians were unhappy because he had called them “culturally Hindu”.
“Why can’t he be a bit more diplomatic in his interviews,” sighed one Parrikar aide that same morning.
“But then he wouldn’t be Manohar Parrikar,” said another with a chuckle.
The pragmatic Kejriwal?
Parrikar’s frugal lifestyle is legendary and has made him a middle-class hero: he carries his own luggage at the airport and travels economy class. As chief minister, his office used only two government cars, one for him and another shared by his staff. When Arvind Kejriwal was making news for his austere lifestyle at the helm of Delhi, many Parrikar fans quickly pointed out that their man was the real aam aadmi chief minister.
There is something to the Parrikar-Kejriwal comparisons. Parrikar, a 58-year-old metallurgical engineer from IIT-Powai (Kejriwal went to IIT-Kharagpur) also burnished his reputation with a fight against corruption. Parrikar took on Goa’s powerful illegal mining lobby. According to the Justice MB Shah Commission report, between 2005 and 2012 there had been illegal mining worth ₹35,000 crore in Goa.
Before the 2012 Goa elections, Parrikar started a Jan Sampark Yatra, where he travelled across Goa, staying with voters and supporters. He painted the Digambar Kamat-led Congress government as corrupt and ineffective, and then rode a strong anti-incumbency wave to deliver a BJP majority for the first time in the state Assembly.
But after taking over as chief minister, the Opposition had accused Parrikar of going soft on illegal mining. In August this year, he had supported the renewal rather than fresh auctioning of 27 mining leases in the state. While the opposition has taken him on over his flip-flops, Parrikar’s supporters say that he has been a pragmatic administrator who did not want to further cripple the mining industry, which was already reeling from a Supreme Court ban, leading to thousands of job cuts and loss of revenue for the exchequer.
A similar story played out with Goa’s offshore casinos. While in Opposition, Parrikar had led protests against them, demanding their immediate closure. But as chief minister, he had delayed the closure till 2016. Doing it in a rush, he reasoned, could certainly scare away investors.
The big policy feather in Parrikar’s cap was his decision to reduce value added tax on petrol from 22 per cent to 0.1 per cent in the state, making it the most affordable in the country at ₹55 a litre. He also reduced VAT on aviation fuel from 22 per cent to 12 per cent, incentivising refuel stops for all airlines at the Dabolim airport. More and cheaper flights to Goa meant more tourists for the state, and more revenues for residents and the exchequer.
Sunny Goa to South Block
If policy pragmatism and innovation are Parrikar’s hallmark, he will need plenty of that in his new job. The Defence Ministry office in South Block will be a far cry from sunny, laidback Goa, though Parrikar himself is reputed to put in long working hours.
Crucial decisions await his approval, including shoring up the artillery wing of the Army, which has not seen any acquisitions since the Bofors scandal of 1987.
Parrikar has the squeaky-clean image to set things in motion on that front, particularly in purchasing light artillery guns that can be moved easily in the mountains, where the Indian Army’s face-offs with the Pakistani and Chinese armies are only increasing.
A $22-billion deal for the delivery of 126 Rafale fighters with French manufacturer Dassault Aviation is also pending. The Indian Air Force chief said we cannot afford any more hold-ups, particularly after the Sukhoi fleet was grounded in October. The Navy has been pitching for more submarines and helicopters as well. All this will require Parrikar to convince Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley to increase capital expenditure on defence, which may not be easy till the economy has recovered fully.
Politically, Parrikar will be expected to talk tough with Pakistan and China during border skirmishes. A man who once called Lal Krishna Advani “rancid pickle” may soon have to come up with some more colourful adjectives for the neighbours.
(Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi is founder of The Political Indian)