High,not remote

Pratibha Patil has a message for her successor: engagement is key

Pratibha Patil has a message for her successor: engagement is key

Read between the lines of President Pratibha Patils interview to this paper last Sunday and it is possible to find a note of caution vis-à-vis the building debate on just how political,or non-political,the president of India should be. Her experience in the legislatures in the state and at the Centre,apart from her tenure as governor,was helpful,said Patil,in addressing the rigours of her job as president. What she learned as a peoples representative at the grassroots was key,she said,recalling her tours of the districts as a junior minister in Maharashtra in the 1970s. President Patil appeared to reinforce a point that is relevant to the discussion in the run-up to July. It is not just that the distinction between a political and a non-political president is spurious,drawing on a restrictive notion of the political. It is also that going through the political paces can be positively empowering for a candidate for the presidents job in a country that hasnt stopped reinventing itself through its politics.

Patil also had a message for her successor in Rashtrapati Bhavan. In its most explicit,and unexceptionable,articulation,it is this: the president is not just a mere rubber stamp but needs to oversee things. Listen to her carefully,however,and there is a clear sense of a constitutional functionary who may be defined as the highest in the country but,by no reckoning,as its remotest. Patil said she is worried by what she sees in Parliament. She admitted to concern about the unprecedented face-off between the civilian establishment and the armed forces. She spoke about projects close to her heart,that she also tried to nudge towards fruition in her tenure. Her helmsmanship of governors conferences resulted in the constitution of the National Mission for Empowerment of Women in 2010. Another governors conference that focused on the problems of productivity in dryland and rain-fed areas has yet to finalise its report.

The president of India,Patil seems to be saying,is not a detached office,isolated and grand,surrounded only by fuss and ceremony. The gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan,even as they must be careful to keep out controversy,can ill afford to insulate their resident from the countrys life and politics.