| | AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi during a press conference at Kanker in Chhattisgarh on April 26, 2008. PTI | | Picture copyright PTI. Any unauthorised reproduction strictly prohibited | | Maloy Krishna Dhar started life off as a junior reporter for Amrita Bazaar Patrika in Calcutta and a part-time lecturer. He joined the Indian Police Service in 1964 and was permanently seconded to the Intelligence Bureau. During his long stint in the Bureau, Dhar saw action in almost all Northeastern States, Sikkim, Punjab and Kashmir. He also handled delicate internal political and several counterintelligence assignments. After retiring in 1996 as joint director, he took to freelance journalism and writing books. Titles credited to him are Open Secrets-India's Intelligence Unveiled, Fulcrum of Evil — ISI, CIA, al-Qaeda Nexus, and Mission to Pakistan. Maloy is considered a top security analyst and a social scientist who tries to portray Indian society through his writings.
In this exclusive column for Sify.com, Dhar meditates on what it would take for him to accept Rahul Gandhi as India’s next Prime Minister.
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| “Why do I think Rahul will one day make a good prime minister? This half-Italian, quarter-Parsi, quarter-Kashmiri pandit is modest, bright (but fortunately not too brilliant—always a handicap in most professions), hardworking and shrewd. He knows which buttons to press, who to rely on, the kind of talent to surround himself with. In a young, globalised, forward-looking India, Rahul Gandhi is in the right place at the right time.”
So wrote a Gandhi family acolyte Minhaz Merchant in DNA on May 21, 2006.
Prior to this astro-political oracle I, a one-year wonder Congress and AICC member, (1997-98), happened to meet in mid-2005 an important cog in 10 Janpath. He sounded equally astro-prophetic: ‘you have missed the bus sir, by quitting politics. Rahulji is taking over soon.’ I felt flattered but did not have the stomach to chew politics again, which require anything between Rs 5 to 10 crores to make a Member of Parliament. The cacophony has not abated since then. Besides the inner intention of Smt. Sonia Gandhi, a fond mother and the supremo of the Congress Parivar, no less a person than Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of UK spoke thus, “I think he (Rahul) is one of the most talented, able and insightful of the younger generation of politicians worldwide, but how he ends up in your politics again, that's for you, for him and for his party to decide. But I think he has got first class mind and great commitment to India…You know, over the years we've talked about party things, obviously, I did a big party reform programme for the Labour Party in the UK. And you know he's one of those politicians that can take a step back and look at what I call the big picture and he's definitely someone who does that.” Blair had met Rahul in Delhi on March 20, 2008 and made the comments to CNN-IBN correspondent Vidya Shankar Aiyar. Besides being a PhD in International Business and a senior producer of CNN-IBN, Vidya Shankar is said to be a nephew of Mani Shankar Aiyar. Coming all the way from Blair, one cannot dismiss the comment as an act of Indian chaploosi. |
