Comeback kid, of a kind

Jaswant Singh later told the press that he had exploited Arun Singh’s sense of nationalism and taken him up on his offer to “work in any capacity” by employing him on a token salary of Re one a month. Arun Singh’s appointment in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) surprised many because his specialisation lay in defence by every reckoning.

Even his designation was baffling. Here was a former Minister of State for Defence and a former key aide toRajiv Gandhi, who had once reported to the Prime Minister, now being inducted in the demystified capacity of a SEA to the External Affairs Minister in a caretaker Government on the eve of elections.

But designations have never bothered this scion of the erstwhile Kapurthala royal family of Punjab. Despite his childhood friendship with Rajiv Gandhi, he preferred to be initiated into public life as his Political Secretary when anyone else with such proximity would have shunned such a role.Arun Singh’s present designation seems to have been carefully crafted to allay any fears in the ruling coalition, or even in the Opposition, that he had switched sides from the Congress to the BJP or revived his political career which had ended abruptly at the height of the Bofors controversy.Whatever people may like to believe, Arun Singh clearly has not ended his self-imposed 12-year exile from Delhi and re-entered public life. That part of his life ended with his resignation in June 1987 when he parted ways with the manwho had brought him into this murky scenario in the first place.He is not going to play a political role in the MEA. At best, this is a professional role spurred by his personal conviction to make a difference to the country’s handling of the Kargil conflict. “Why else would he join a defeated Government just before the elections?” asks a retired admiral.Adds a security expert who knows him well: “This is certainly the case. People can interpret his induction the way they want and read into his designation what they like.”

That he is a shy man who keeps to himself and has studiously avoided the limelight for almost two decades hasn’t helped unravel what he is about. He has never contested an election since he was a member of the Rajya Sabha and believed that he was answerable only to the upper House of Parliament, preferring professional scrutiny of his actions rather than public accountability.

For the media, he has proved a tough nut that has still not been cracked. A senior investigativejournalist, who was once probing the Bofors gun deal, remembers trying to track him down in Binsar in the late ’80s. Having reached his home, she sent him a slip through a domestic. It read: “The weather is wonderful. Can we have a cup of tea together?” Pat came the reply: “The weather is really beautiful and the tea is on its way.” She had to return without meeting him.

When Sanjay Gandhi died in an aircrash in Delhi in 1980 and Indira Gandhi began persuading her elder son Rajiv to join politics, he made his entry conditional on Arun Singh accompanying him. Rajiv and Arun Singh were close childhood buddies. They had once moved about in shorts, licking ice lollies.So when the request from his old friend came in, Arun Singh chucked an established corporate career to be by his side. Even at that juncture, he was sure that e was not going to enter public life. It was understood that he was not going to be the jawbone. He preferred to be the backbone. That’s how it was for the first few years, until theextraordinary circumstances caused by Mrs Gandhi’s assassination changed the scenario completely and caused Rajiv Gandhi’s premature coronation as prime minister.

After Rajiv won an unprecedented mandate in the 1984 general elections, Arun Singh became the custodian of his electoral equity. He was an integral part of the core group that had its eyes fixed on the 21st century. It was this group of successful corporate high-fliers — people like Arun Singh, Arun Nehru, Arun Nanda, Sam Pitroda, Romi Chopra, among others — who quickly acquired the sobriquet of “boot polish and colour TV wallahs”.

Arun Singh’s strength lay in his management skills. As a key aide to Rajiv, he used his corporate expertise to handle the vast and varied demands of managing human and material resources within the government and the Congress Party. He was associated with momentous and defining moments in the nation’s history, such as Asiad ’82, the colour TV revolution, the spread of Doordarshan, prestigious DRDO projects,Operation Bluestar with its disastrous aftermath, Mrs Gandhi’s assassination and the anti-Sikh riots that followed, Operation Brasstacks that nearly led to a war with Pakistan.As the Minister of State for Defence, he also presided over the purchase of the Swedish Bofors gun and unsuccessfully attempted a clean break with the past while enforcing Rajiv’s own policy of eliminating middlemen from defence deals. As part of this policy, he repeatedly refused a meeting with then Bofors managing director, Martin Ardbo, who was camping in a five-star hotel in New Delhi. He did this by maintaining that a minister did not meet a negotiating party in a deal and escaped any mention in Ardbo’s tell-tale diaries. Also he, along with then Chief of Army Staff General K. Sundarji, actively advocated the cancellation of the Bofors contract after it was established that money had changed hands.

If Sundarji was the thinking man’s general, Arun Singh was the thinking General’s man. Both men vibed wonderfully well and shared agrand vision for the Indian armed forces as a technologically up-to-date, well-equipped and swift-footed modern force. General Sundarji, who died earlier this year, is on record as having said that Arun Singh resigned as the Minister of State for Defence because he was caught between loyalty to his friend and what he thought was right. There was another major reason for his resignation: After Sundarji’s recommendation to cancel the Bofors contract was rejected as it “was awkward and did not suit the government”, the General wanted to step down. He interpreted this rejection to mean that the government didn’t have faith in him. Arun Singh persuaded him to stay on, saying that a General resigning on a defence deal would be misconstrued. He told Sundarji that the circumstance warranted his own resignation and went ahead and put in his papers.

He surfaced briefly during the V.P. Singh tenure, when he headed the Committee on Defence Expenditure in 1990-91. He has also spent a year in 1997 as a Fellow at theUniversity of Illinois–which also runs an arms control programme.

But apart from brief breaks, Arun Singh has led a largely retired life in his abode in Binsar where Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a part of his Discovery of India. He is extremely interested in science and defence issues and reads extensively on these subjects. There is no electricity and tap water in his modest mud-and-wood cottage. Instead, there are solar panels that energise a couple of appliances besides providing some light. The water is collected from natural springs and purified and stored for use.

Once the present assignment is over, Arun Singh will no doubt return to his ocean of tranquility in the Himalayas. For here is a man who is not interested either in publicity or glory or in the madding crowds.

–HARPAL SINGH

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