Shashi Tharoor: Big thinker and everyday politician

When you call Shashi Tharoor multifaceted, you do not use the word lightly or glibly. Tharoor is many things rolled into one: an author (now completing his 13th book) , United Nations peace-keeper, refugee worker and Under-Secretary in a 29-year stint, a human rights activist, a former Minister of State for External Affairs and now an elected member of the Indian Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala.

He’s an unusual politician, finding himself at ease spending half a month each month in Kerala, the land of his roots but in a country he’s not lived in for three decades. He now traipses around the constituency, making certain he impacts and improves the lives of the people living there – and making sure he gets re-elected.

He’s active on social media – and now has more followers than any other Indian – 1.4 million of them. He tells his followers what he’s doing, he asks them about their concerns, he shares his observations with them and answers their queries.

Firstpost spoke to Dr Tharoor in an exclusive interview at his New Delhi office to understand what makes him what he is.

For those of our readers who do not have a robust Internet connection, the transcript of the entire interview is reproduced below. The transcription is verbatim, so please do understand if some of the sentences seem unstructured – because they are, as Dr Tharoor was only having a relaxed conversation with Firstpost.

If you were still in New York, and the CEOs of a few Fortune 500 companies asked you what on earth was happening in India, how would you answer the question?

Actually, I found myself in a similar position, not in New York but with a lot of international CEOs — at a conference recently and I’d tell them exactly what I said, which is, “there is a perception that the bloom is off the Indian rose and things are going wrong with the India story, that the country is in some sort of irreversible decline, and so on.” My answer to that, very frankly, is that India is a much more complicated story than that, that the pessimism I hear today is as exaggerated as, perhaps, the earlier optimism about India becoming a superpower was overblown. I think we really have to moderate both the optimism and the pessimism that people feel about our country. To my mind, there are a number of strong, underlying verities that encourage optimism about India. Yes, I’m very conscious that the growth rate has gone down steadily in the last two to three quarters, that projections for the next year will have to be scaled down as well, But the underlying realities are still that, even with all the scaling down, we are still the second fastest growing major economy in the world after China.

There are a lot more reasons why we should continue to grow, including some ongoing projects – not just pie in the sky dreams – but things like the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, which is already a real plan with real financing, partnership with the Japanese government and a number of Japanese companies and major, billion-dollar investments coming in.

So it’s not as if we’re looking at only a story of gloom and doom in India – that’s what I would tell your foreign CEO friends.

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On the paralysis in decision-making and on roll-backs..

Both of those are important concerns. On the question of decision-making having slowed down, I believe it has something to do (also) with the current atmosphere in the country of anti-corruption and all of this which has made a number of decision-makers unnecessarily cautious, fearing that any decision that they make could be questioned on grounds of impropriety of some sort or the other, even if they feel that they are doing the right thing for the country. We’ve got to get over this blip, and we will, I’m sure.

But the other side of the question is, as you said, decisions being rolled back – and that should not be happening. They’ve only been a couple of instances and those instances are regrettable. (But I think) There will be new signals coming out of the government. Already, you saw the prime minister having a very focused meeting with the planning commission with a number of key ministries present trying to set new targets and new actions. I think the government is going to proceed very much along those lines. We’re hearing that with the presidential elections (out of the way), there will be changes of personnel, there will be a cabinet reshuffle. I expect there will be a lot more energy and focus in the last couple of years of this UPA government.

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How are you so confident that the UPA will complete its term?

I think the confidence comes from a shrewd assessment of the political realities and the economic needs. Take the case of FDI in retail, which was one of the policies you mentioned was announced and then rolled back, because of opposition not just from the opposition, but also from coalition partners. I think, very clearly, it’s something that the government is convinced is good for the nation and it will certainly send a very positive signal to investors outside. But I think, next time it will be announced, and it will be one day, it will be after the political homework has been done and the numbers have been added up. These are some of the things that have to be sorted out.

The irony about FDI in retail is that it doesn’t actually need parliamentary approval. It is an administrative governmental decision to be made, but because it happened to be announced during a parliament session, it became impossible to go ahead with. But, nonetheless, the government will have to take that into account.

Look, no one’s claiming that the UPA government has been perfect, but I think it’s got a pretty good record that people are not giving it enough credit for.

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How did you make the transition, first from being a diplomat to being a minister at the Central government, and then from being a minister to being in state-level politics?

Neither was easy, but neither was as difficult, perhaps, as people think. First of all, my career in international diplomacy was not only as a diplomat. As a UN official, a lot of what we did required diplomacy in dealing with member states, but it often involved real, substantive work that had nothing to do with diplomacy. My first 11 years were (in) refugee work, humanitarian action. My next 7 ½ years at the UN was in peacekeeping. I guess there were diplomatic components in dealing with the security council members, liaising with the permanent missions to the UN, various governments and so on. But, these were real, substantive jobs in their own right. They went beyond diplomacy, and they were ‘action in the field’, as it were.

Yes, the following 11 years of my 29-year UN career were somewhat more in the rarefied echelons of the top of the United Nations structure, in the Secretary General’s office and then as Under Secretary General myself. Those positions were more classically sort of bureaucratic/diplomatic functions.

Having done all of that, I never lost the sense that what mattered was the purpose of what I was trying to do. So when I came into politics, it was very tough (the adjustment to the electoral process). That certainly wasn’t easy. It’s not easy to go out into the streets and the fields and the villages for very, very long hours on hot days, in the hottest months of the year and communicate to people who’ve never seen you, pretty much, why you deserve their trust and vote.

It was (a) hugely challenging and hugely educative experience. Well, it worked. They gave me a near record majority and I came to parliament with that behind me so I was buoyed by that vote of confidence from the voters.

The second transition was not totally a transition because I remain an MP at the centre and my relationships with the central ministers, with my work in parliament, it is no longer that of a minister, it is that of a backbencher, but the work is still centre-focused.

But, of course, the orientation is very much to take back benefits from the centre to my constituency, to my district, my state in order to be able to say to my voters, “look (at) what I’ve done for you in Delhi, so you should vote for me again.”

So there is a continuity and there is a change. When I was a minister, I had the same responsibility – I still needed, one day, to get re-elected from there. But, I had much less time there and people understood that. I was constantly travelling. In fact, as minister of state for external affairs, there were months when I was gone for almost three weeks out of four. So, in those circumstances, the country comes first and the constituency does not. Today, I spend about half the month every month in Thiruvanathapuram, except when parliament is in session. Even then I come pretty close, because I go back every weekend. I will say that it’s probably been good for my political career that I’ve been able to entrench myself a little more in the affections and allegiances of the voters.

So, in both cases, I would say, (of) the adjustment – there’s been a change, but it’s not been a difficult or impossible adjustment.

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Why do you think you have been tagged ‘elitist’? What has been the impact of the tag?

I never had that tag in my constituency; that tag was given to me in Delhi by certain rather motivated people.

If people are going to judge me by the way I speak or the language I use or the way I dress (or) whatever, so be it. If they want to judge people superficially, I cant change that. I tend to accept people for the way they are and I would like to be accepted for who I am, for the way I am, but if people don’t want accept me, I can live with that. To my mind, it’s as much their problem as mine.

My voters have actually been extremely accepting and welcoming with me. We communicate quite directly. My Malayalam is not the most sophisticated, so I don’t speak in elitist Malayalam, I speak, very much, the common man’s or common woman’s Malayalam. As a result, I don’t have a barrier there. At the same time, people realise that I do have a different background, but I’m there to help them. As long as I show an interest in their problems, and I reach out to help them (which I do all the time), that is enough from the voter’s point of view.

This media tag, or some parts/ some elements of the media choosing to portray me as elitist, I think, was always unfair; because, as I’ve said, I’ve trudged refugee camps, I’ve walked near minefields (during) peacekeeping. I’ve not been somebody who has spent all my life in rarefied air-conditioned offices. So, it’s important to understand that this is somebody who does relate to ordinary people, (but) in very different ways from which, perhaps, a Delhi media celebrity might relate.

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Do you think Indians are increasingly xenophobic and that your ‘foreignness’ has impacted you?

I think we’re actually quite welcoming of foreigners and strangers as a culture. In fact, normally, my experience with Indians has always been that they are very happy to embrace ‘otherness’. They see it as ‘other’ but they embrace it, and they’re very hospitable, generous people. So, what happened with me, I think, was that there was a particular malicious political agenda on the part of some and this was a handy stick to beat me with. I will confess that I made one egregious mistake and that played into that and that was using an expression that was very routine and common in the Western world where I’d been living for the preceding three decades, but which, sadly, I did not realise, was not common in India, when I referred to ‘cattle class’. That was then taken to both dub me as an elitist and to make it out that I was some sort of foreign import and didn’t relate to India, simply because the journalist who asked me the question, “will you travel cattle class?”, was also an Indian, I assumed that everyone in India knew the expression was NOT to demean the passengers in economy class, but rather the airlines for herding people in like cattle and that’s why it’s called cattle class. That’s been widely known for decades in the western world. Sadly, in India it was not, and, therefore, it was very easy (once people started translating it into Hindi and Gujarati and Malayalam) and then, of course, I became an object of resentment and dislike for a sentiment I had never felt, let alone expressed.

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Why do you believe you will be re-elected by your constituency?

I was the first to issue a half-term report half-way through the UPA’s mandate, which is also halfway through my mandate, to my voters and to the press in Thiruvananthapuram telling them what I had done for them over the last 2 ½ years. It’s a very long list, several dozen items, but, to give you a few examples, I have been able to bring more Central road funds to my constituency than almost any other MP, and, as a result, a number of major roads have been done or are under the process of being done. I was able to break a 34-year old logjam on constructing a bypass for NH 47 that runs through my constituency through my interventions with the ministry and the bureaucrats in the ministry and the two ministers involved – now that project is getting off the ground.

I was able to convey the needs of my constituents on a whole range of issues. I still issue more than 200 or 300 letters every month to ministries. In fact, that’s probably an undercount, it’s more than that – not counting (letters for) emergency quotas and izzat certificates for rail travel, but substantive issues, for actual needs and problems and, as a result, many people’s problems have been solved as a result of my the actions of my colleagues in the office and their diligent follow up. I have been able to bring in a number of railway connections. I must admit, the announcements by the ministers have not always been matched by implementation, but, in the railway budget, Thiruvanathapuram has come out very well in three successive railway budgets.

In the cultural sphere, I was able to bring in the Hay Festival of Literature into Thiruvananthapuram. I had a very ambitious scheme to ‘twin’ Thiruvananthapurum with Barcelona, which was stymied by the Communist-dominated city corporation which, unfortunately, refused to even discuss the prospect, even though Barcelona was one of the few cities which actually had a development cooperation budget which could have been very useful to us. But, petty politics always comes in and that’s been a setback.

Then, I’ve taken action in a number of other areas: healthcare areas, drinking water issues. You name it, mental health, I’ve simply not been absent, I’ve been active in all these areas. I’ve kept the Ayurvedic centre that was about to be transferred out of my district – I persuaded the minster to keep it in Thiruvananthapuram and got more funding for it.

These are the big issues. Every week, there are smaller matters in which my intervention is proven decisive. For example, there’s a famous college, a girl’s college (called), All Saint’s College, where a railway gate which was indispensable for the students to cross over to the college got closed due to non-payment of funds due to non-availability of funds and I was able to intercede with the railways to get it opened while trying to mediate a different solution which I hope will succeed. But, at least, in the meantime, the kids are able to cross. All of these things don’t get equal amounts of publicity and, if they do, they’re forgotten the day the newspapers are thrown away. People have seen me doing all of that, they’ve also seen me very visible in the by-election campaign in our constituency which we happened to win. So I think I’m seen as somebody who has devoted sincere attention to the problems of the constituency and I’m proud of the fact that many in social media and so on are hailing me as, some say, the best MP that this constituency has had – and I don’t want to, in any way, demean my predecessors, but I’d like to think that, certainly, I would be amongst the best, given what I have been able to accomplish.

__________________________________________________________ How do you spend so much time on twitter? Is it worth the trouble?

I spend a lot less time on it than people assume, partly because I’m very quick on the trigger, as, unfortunately, worked against me on ‘cattle class’, but partly because I do most of my tweeting on a Blackberry between appointments, when I’m in a car heading from one ministry to parliament or whatever, and I’ve got a few minutes. Of course, I might have to make a phone call at the moment and I will not do any social media, but, if not, then I would go on to social media and quickly check a few messages and reply. But I make sure that, every day, I reply to enough messages (so) that people have a continued interest in engaging with me. I reply, I re-tweet messages that I find interesting from other people, and I put up some of my own thoughts regularly. That, I find, is a very satisfying activity.

First of all, every politician values an audience –and here, I have an audience of almost 1.4 million – 14 lakh – people; more than I can crowd into any maidan in my constituency.

Secondly, it becomes a public form for reflection and thought and description of that you’re doing. I know it will be boring if I just give my diary entries every day, but I give enough of a flavour of the things I’m doing so I get feedback from people who are interested or appreciative. Sometimes, I observe, almost like a creative writer, when I’m describing the experience of standing in an open top jeep and going around the constituency and trying to wave to voters and I could do it with a sense of humour because this time, I was doing it with another candidate. I can remember when I, too, was a candidate. I remember the experience of waving (in the gathering gloom) at a lamppost or a department store mannequin or even a cut-out of my opponent. These things happen, and I talk about them on twitter and this sort of thing, I believe, keeps people engaged and interested and they come back to me. That coming back gives me a sort of finger on the pulse of what people are thinking.

Social media is disproportionately right-wing. One gets more than one’s fair share of Hindutva types bashing one, but, beyond that, you get a cross-section of views, which, I think, are very helpful. Sometimes I learn about problems from twitter that I might not have heard about form the routine chain. Today, a number of people on twitter from my constituency who live in Bangalore alerted me to a problem relating to an unprovoked changing in the timing of a train they rely on to get to Thiruvananthapuram. So, from Twitter I’ve learned of a problem I need to address the chairman of the Railway Board to find out why this was done and to ask him to reverse it or take into account the concerns of my constituents.

I find Twitter (to be a) very useful medium and, because it is interactive, it’s that much more useful.

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Would you encourage more politicians to be on twitter?

I certainly would, and, in fact, many have followed my path. Amusingly, the more prominent ones are from the wrong party. Narendra Modi and Sushma Swaraj are very prominent on twitter. As far as the Congress is concerned, we now have about a dozen figures; some MPs and some non-MPs like Digvijaya Singh and Anil Shastri. Then there’s Omar Abdullah, not from my party, but a chief minister. There are enough people from the ruling alliance whose voices are also being heard.

__________________________________________________________ Will we see you writing satire as you did in The Great Indian Novel again?

Satire has a very legitimate place in our culture. Going back to the ancient Sanskrit texts, there was always scope for humour, irony, and indeed, for showing our heroes as people with feet of clay.

I’m very proud of The Great Indian Novel. I think it stands by itself in a particular period as a novel that uses familiar truths to cast unfamiliar light and unfamiliar angles on all these familiar things. To put it perhaps more poetically, it uses unfamiliar chords to play a familiar tune.

This (satire) is something I’ve tried only once thereafter in a novel called Show business where I’ve used Bollywood instead of politics as a metaphor to satirise Indian society.

I’ve moved on a little bit from there. My third novel, Riot, was a fairly serious novel. My non-fictional output has now vastly outstripped my fiction, to the extent that my next book, my 13th book (which is coming out in July), is about India’s foreign policy and its place in the world. It’s called Pax Indica: India and the world of the 21st Century. It’s about 450 pages of rather densely researched and argued serious prose.

I’d like to think that, to some degree, that’s where I’m at, right now, both as political figure and someone in public life.

But, who knows? One day, the voters may decide to return me to the world of literature – and satire could be – I don’t say will be, but could be – a tool that I pick up once again.

But, right now, as I said, my focus is much more on the clear, understandable, immediate challenges of public policy.