Rajiv Pratap Rudy, 41, is living embodiment of the law of unintended consequences. Years ago, he met an acquaintance from his student days in Chandigarh while on a flight from Patna to Delhi. A day later, he dropped in on his friend, met her roommate instead and found Neelam, his wife. This past weekend, destiny bowled another seductive googly to Rudy. As minister of state for commerce and industry, he was on a trade mission to Nigeria when he heard of the impending ministerial reshuffle. He was calling home desperately, trying to second guess the prime minister. His then boss, Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley, too was said to be unhappy at the idea of losing an efficient junior. Rudy needn’t have worried. The lecturer of economics in a Patna college — Rudy is on long leave —ended up with independent charge of the ministry of civil aviation. Since then this ‘‘almost’’ six footer hasn’t stopped grinning. Actually, he hasn’t stopped grinning for the past year and a half. Till September 2001, he was back-bencher MP from Chapra — he’d won in 1996, admits to an ‘‘arrogance’’ that saw him lose in 1998 but regained his seat in 1999. He was noticed though as a part-time if trendy BJP talking head on the news channels. Then he entered government and, by all accounts, did a reasonable job. Now he presides over one of New Delhi’s perennial patronage-dispensing machines. Already an aide of Rudy’s is heard muttering, ‘‘Reservation, upgradation . is se to Commerce accha tha (Commerce was better).’’ Rudy admits he will be ‘‘under scrutiny’’, not the least because the NDA has had a strange fetish for underperforming Bihari civil aviation ministers. Rudy’s predecessors ranged from the clueless to the colourless, from Sharad Yadav to Shahnawaz Hussain. Civil Aviation is also a reform roadblock. Far from being privatised — ‘‘There is a global slump. What is the point finding partners at the lowest rates?’’ argues Rudy— Indian Airlines and Air-India are in for a shopping binge. Between them, they plan to buy over 60 planes at an estimated Rs 20,000 crore. The deals with Airbus and Boeing, if and when they are signed, will be political dynamite. That’s India. To be fair Rudy, whose wife went on leave from her Alliance Air job the day he became her super-boss, knows India only too well. He’s a survivor, helped doubtless by an ever-increasing list of godfathers. In 1984, despite being an ‘‘outsider’’, he was elected general secretary of the Punjab University Students Union. Returning home, he became an acolyte of fellow Bihari Subodh Kant Sahay and fellow Thakur Chandra Shekhar. In 1990, he was elected MLA on a Janata Dal ticket but soon expelled by Laloo Yadav. Kailashpati Misra facilitated his entry into the BJP. Since then, be it PM or DPM, Jaitley or BJP chief M. Venkaiah Naidu, Rudy has stayed on the right side of the right people. Though he indignantly denies it, he’s also acquired a reputation for flashy living. He insists he doesn’t wear designer kurtas but has his clothes stitched by a ‘‘traditional tailor in Patna’s Maurya complex’’. For a man at the cusp of making the A list of page3/6, maybe he should be more discreet about his preferences.
