Last week a leaked cable from then US ambassador David Mulford suggested that the removal of the “contentious and outspoken Iran pipeline advocate” Mani Shankar Aiyar and his replacement by “pro-US” Murli Deora signified a
“determination to ensure that US/India relations continue to move ahead rapidly.” The implication was that Mani Shankar Aiyar somehow impeded that and the Prime Minister wanted to send the correct signal to the US and therefore removed Mani Shankar Aiyar. The cable stressed that Mani Shankar Aiyar had “encroached on MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) turf too many times”. The PMO interceded and warned him to “back off”. And yet “Aiyar’s Ministry of Petroleum and natural Gas continued to interfere with MEA’s attempt to craft policy, our contacts said, citing Pakistan, China, Burma, Bangladesh, Iran and Sudan as areas of inter-governmental conflict.” The cable suggested that the Minister’s “self-promoting maverick diplomacy” was too much for the PM to handle. Therefore Mr Deora was brought in.
It sounded very ipso-facto. But I could not help recalling a certain description I read of Murli Deora: “The incompetence of Murli is proverbial!” That was N K Singh letting one Ms Niira Radia into his thinking on the reshuffle that finally took Deora out of the Petroleum Ministry. “Every time a question comes up in any House of Parliament, he is more busy trying to appease that questioner… But Murli is an incompetent minister, he may be a good man.” It will be safe to assume that if a person with the enviable reach of Ms Radia was talking to N K Singh, who had a long and enviable ringside view to the Delhi circus, on his opinion of the reshuffle, it would be because she valued his insights. Why would Manmohan Singh employ someone proverbially incompetent as his nodal minister on
energy policy? Mulford was on television the other day conceding, quite grudgingly, that the cables sent by American embassies tend to be generally “accurate”. This was one he himself had sent, so should we assume that this was more accurate than most? I may be bordering on heresy here, but it would be wrong to think that the Prime Minister wanted Mani Shankar Aiyar out because of American pressure. It is easy to overlook that it was Manmohan Singh himself who breathed new life into the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline by giving Mani Shankar Aiyar a clear brief motivated by national interest viz, promoting energy
security. (Let us discount for a minute that it is possible to make a convincing argument that the PM’s vision of energy security does not encompass anything more than the first three English numerals followed by the word ‘agreement’).The Minister pursued three pipelines, all of which predated him: Iran-Pakistan India, Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAPI)-India, and the Myanmar-Bangladesh-India energy pipelines. Americans pushed TAPI because it did not involve Iran, overlooking the instability in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yet, Murli Deora’s entry into the ministry did not prevent the Prime Minister from assuring Amanullah Khan, the then Pakistani Oil minister, that India was committed to pursuing the pipeline from Iran. Dialogue was pursued and remarkable progress was made, including an understanding on the price. It was the Pakistani political scenario that prevented progress: Musharraf had begun to lose control and went into a political and military tailspin, crashlanding far outside Pakistan. Yet, even after India no longer could continue negotiations, Iran and Pakistan managed to sign an agreement on the pipeline. Even the worst detractors of the Prime Minister would readily concede that Pakistan has been colonised by the America in far less subtle ways than the mind of our Prime Minister. Why then would they act against their masters?
The real story of why Mani Shankar was shifted thus lies elsewhere. Those days there was a heavy rumour doing the rounds that Mani Shankar Aiyar’s
refusal to collect money for the party may have had something to do with it. That nobody was calling him Money Shankar Aiyar was wide testimony to his refusal to get his hands dirty. Strangely, Mulford describes Deora’s “long standing connection” to the Reliance industrial group which includes significant energy equities as his “only vulnerability.” How far off the mark is this?! Many would vehemently argue that it would be generally accurate to say the opposite is closer to the truth. Which is the only thing that would explain why our prime minister, whose honesty and integrity and intolerance for corruption is equally proverbial in Congress circles, would make an “incompetent” man his pointsman for energy security. Let us not start giving Americans credit where none is due.
The author is Executive Editor of The New Indian Express. sudarshan@expressbuzz.com