Man for all seasons

A fighter till his last breath, Pranab Mukherjee did not give up till he achieved his ambitious goals

- RABI BANERJEE

Pranab Mukherjee’s name does not invoke much awe among Congressmen in his home state, West Bengal, although he was the president of the country and a Bharat Ratna. Many of them think he was the “real destroyer” of the Congress in the state. When he was nominated by the Congress in 2012 as its presidential candidate, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made her opposition public and said, “Pranab da did not do anything for Bengal.” But when it became clear that he would win, she came around and endorsed him.

It was perhaps Mukherjee’s meteoric rise in the party and in Delhi that made him an object of envy. Although Bengal has been home to a galaxy of eminent Congressmen, Mukherjee was in a league of his own, especially in national politics. His capability to maintain cordial relations with people from across the political spectrum and to sense the political atmosphere made him indispensable to the Congress and the governments he was part of.

It was senior Congress leader Siddhartha Shankar Ray who recommended Mukherjee’s name to Indira Gandhi in 1969 as a potentially efficient administrator. Indira made him a member of the Rajya Sabha and, in 1973, appointed him deputy minister of industrial development. In 1974, he was appointed minister of state for finance. Mukherjee played an important role during the Emergency as Indira’s key man overseeing the bureaucracy. When she was voted back to power in 1980, he was inducted into the cabinet as commerce minister and two years later was made finance minister, a post he held till her death in 1984.