How govt goof-up gave Ramdev a propaganda coup

The group of ministers engaged with Baba Ramdev to persuade him to call off his fast will meet this evening at 6.30 pm in the North Block office of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Home Minister P Chidambram will also be attending the meeting which will take stock of the situation and also discuss the way forward. The ministerial delegation is likely to meet the Baba again on Friday.

The ministerial group, which includes Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, and Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahay, has been constituted following a meeting of the cabinet committee on political affairs (CCPA). It is also likely to reflect on its decision to meet the yoga guru at the Delhi airport on Wednesday, where they had detailed discussions with the Baba in the VIP lounge.

Workers stitch cloth for tents as preparations are underway for Baba Ramdev’s Satyagrah which will begin on June 4. PTI

The presence of as many as four senior ministers at the airport to receive Baba on Wednesday led by the de facto number two in the government, Pranab Mukherjee— has been not only met with disapproval from some senior party leaders, including Rahul Gandhi confidante Digvijaya Singh, but also resulted in some red faces in the government.

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The government now realises that in its zealousness to avoid having a repeat of an Anna Hazare-like situation, it perhaps went overboard in trying to cajole the Baba into giving up his fast plans.

A powerful section in the Cabinet now thinks the spectacle of a group of senior ministers waiting for the Baba and then being closeted with him in the VIP lounge—listening to the almost one-way rant of the yoga guru and his followers — in full media glare was some kind of a PR disaster.

The irony of it all is that the meeting at the airport was actually supposed to be an exercise in avoiding the media!

A cabinet ranking minister in the Manmohan Singh government told Firstpost that the decision to meet the Baba at the airport was taken as part of a strategy to try and give a slip to the media. Their logic was that once the Baba came to Delhi he will be constantly followed by the Press so it will be best for the ministerial group to have an initial meeting with the Baba at the airport itself.

A senior minister tried to oppose the idea saying it would be impossible to hide such a broad-daylight meeting with the Baba at such a public place. The minister even suggested that even if this information was not leaked by anyone in the government, the Baba’s side was smart enough to realise the PR coup it would be for them if the country knew about the red carpet being rolled out for him together with a high-powered reception committee.

What makes the whole thing even more absurd is that there was no demand from the Baba’s side to have the meeting at the airport. According to a senior government functionary, Baba would have had no problem in coming to a neutral and less public a venue for talks with the ministerial delegation. In fact, he had even agreed to meet the Finance Minister in the latter’s office Wednesday evening.

Mukherjee’s visit to the airport was also not a part of the original plan.

According to a cabinet minister, once somebody as senior as Pranab -da came to the airport meeting the entire power dynamics changed in favour of the Baba.

“Negotiations are not about hierarchy but about building a rapport and winning the trust of the other side. It is also a gradual process. Once somebody as senior as the Finance Minister came for the meeting the entire equation changed.”

Nothing much really happened in the airport meeting. The Baba’s and his team spent a fair bit of time reiterating their charter of demands while the officials accompanying the ministerial delegation — including the former CBDT chairman , Sudhir Chandra, and the cabinet secretary, KM Chandrasekhar — gave a point by point reply detailing the government response.

Interestingly, the same was done two days ago— in much more detail — by Mukherjee, who had sent an eight-page written reply to the Baba’s charter of demands.

The problem, in the words of a senior government functionary, is that the Manmohan Singh government right now is so nervous and so completely bereft of ideas that what was aimed to be some kind of a PR coup ( in terms of not letting the media come to know about the meeting of the ministers with Baba Ramdev) turned into an embarrassing self-goal and a exercise in PR hara-kiri.