7 min readApr 4, 2024 06:58 PM IST
First published on: Apr 4, 2024 at 05:41 PM IST
At a media event a few days ago, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made an astonishing, rather out-of-character admission. Her public image has been of someone who admits nothing, concedes nothing but dutifully buttresses a narrative her party or the government wishes to nurture. She started her time in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a grim-faced spokesperson, who mostly spoke by injecting sarcasm into question tags. That part of her has not gone away in the years she has been a Union minister.
Given this perception of her, what she said at the media event created a mild curiosity on social media. It raised eyebrows for a few hours perhaps, but that is where it stopped. It did not propel a larger debate on the state of our electoral democracy. There is no better time to have one given that the first phase of the general elections is less than a month away. The cynical could say that such a debate may have been suppressed, but the gravely cynical will argue that it has all been normalised. Nothing shocks anybody anymore. And even if it does, social media reduces the duration of outrage with its templates of distraction.
Finance Minister, without finances?
What did Nirmala Sitharaman actually say? Here it is: When asked if she would contest the Lok Sabha polls, like some of her Rajya Sabha colleagues, she said: “I don’t have that kind of money to contest… it is also going to be a kind of winnability criteria they use — are you from this community, are you from this religion? I said I don’t think I will be able to do it.” When the anchor teased as to how could the Finance Minister of India not have any money power, she did not waste a second: “My budget, my salary, my earning, my saving is mine, and not the Consolidated Fund of India.”
To another question about the party admitting busloads of those charged with corruption, she responded pithily, without the usual combativeness: “The party is open. We welcome everybody.” When the question was repeated with a data point, she gestured in a way that possibly meant that it was neither her monkey nor her circus and repeated the answer: “Party is welcoming everybody.”
How does one read these responses? Some may say it is a very middle-class, educated, upper-caste disappointment, and to nurture that disappointment is also a cathartic nurturing of a constituency. It is scoring by acknowledging. The two answers, however, reveal a malaise that is not just familiar in our polity but is striking and corroding. Upon closer examination, it could even suggest that the nationalist narratives the BJP puts out periodically mean little because everything ultimately is governed by narratives of money and narrower identities.
Ten years of BJP, but fault lines remain
Even as part of a majority, being of the dominant religion alone is not sufficient (Nirmala Sitharaman ticks the right box here). What ensures winnability is the rigid silos of caste, sub-caste and community — which means only tribal loyalties. These are not fantastic, new revelations. What is new is the BJP letting it disturb its narrative of oneness, of one nation and of revival that imagines a flatness without the humps, hills, gorges and ravines of diversity and difference. It is perhaps an indirect admission that we survive as a nation because we negotiate the harsh terrain through a jugaad of ancient and modern ideas.
There is yet another thing that comes up: If a person like Sitharaman, put on a tall pedestal for a decade with the most powerful portfolios, feels defeated by baser ideas, then what is to happen to skyscrapers of idealism and empowerment that her party’s politics is supposed to nurture? What about the status quo that it was supposed to dismantle in the last 10 years? One wonders if Sitharaman’s answers are also a reflection of what the Narendra Modi brand is realistically able to manage without the inflation of its syllables.
It is not that the party is without funds for a suitable candidate. The electoral bonds debate reiterates this. But then why has Sitharaman declared herself unsuitable? Does she think that the party may not want to waste money on her because she does not fulfil the other criteria? At another point in the interview, commenting on the Opposition, the FM said something that may add a fresh dimension. Here’s a paraphrased version: “Women got tickets when men feared to contest. If the woman ends up winning, they will claim they gave her an opportunity. If she loses, they will argue why give a ticket to a woman, she will anyway lose?” Willy nilly, does this comment embrace her party too?
Is RSS okay with money in politics?
When money becomes central, when all corrupt enter the party, does it disturb the moral balance of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)? Is Sitharaman expressing a dilemma that has made a home in the deep recesses of the BJP’s parent organisation? Or is it all a wasteful exercise to read so much into what Sitharaman really means? Is it finally about a person and her private worldview?
How would Sitharaman’s colleagues in the party perceive her statements? By implication do they all look corrupt now? Would they feel they have been enriched when in government and in the party, while the finance minister’s values kept her depleted? Does this self-righteous segregation endear her to them? Does she have only her luck and destiny to thank for her high seat in the cabinet? Should she have thought of contesting an election as payback to the party? Even if she didn’t win wouldn’t it have still contributed to the party’s vote share?
Srinivasaraju is author of Strange Burdens: The Politics and Predicaments of Rahul Gandhi
Nirmala Sitharaman started her time in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a grim-faced spokesperson, who mostly spoke by injecting sarcasm into question tags. That part of her has not gone away in the years she has been a Union minister. (Express photo/File) 
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