New Delhi, May 20 (Inditop.com) Denounced as arrogant by some of his colleagues but lauded as efficient by the opposition, Home Minister P. Chidambaram is the one member of Manmohan Singh’s government who has ceaselessly hogged the limelight – for the challenging job of managing homeland security as much as for his persona.
Chidambaram, 65, took over from Shivraj Patil two days after the horrific November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack ended. And there has been no getting off the treadmill since.
While his predecessor was rarely heard of, the business management graduate from Harvard proved his worth and retained the portfolio after the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) retained power in May last year.
Chidambaram has been appreciated, even by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as an effective minister who has moved to streamline the functioning of the home ministry that has faced many internal security challenges.
A year after the UPA took office for a second term, the security establishment is facing its most serious challenge following a dramatic rise in Maoist violence.
On the flip side, while there has been trouble in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, there has been only one major terror attack in the last 18 months – the Feb 13 Pune bombing that killed 17 people.
Home ministry officials say it is not that terrorists didn’t want to strike. “They had planned. But we foiled at least 20 terror plots,” an official told Inditop.
This is because of a “perceptible improvement in intelligence sharing”, he added.
That success apart, Chidambaram was almost forced to quit after the April 6 Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada area that killed 76 security personnel.
This was followed just 40 days later on May 17 with more than 30 people, including civilians, being killed in a landmine blast in the same region.
Following the deadliest attack in four decades of Maoist insurgency, Chidambaram’s way of functioning came under severe criticism from his own party members, including ministerial colleague Jairam Ramesh.
It was Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who first stirred the controversy by calling him “intellectually arrogant”. Mani Shankar Aiyar, a Rajya Sabha MP, denounced the home minister for similar reasons.
Ramesh, in Beijing recently, also said that the Chidambaram-led home ministry was “paranoid” about China. This triggered a huge row, which settled only after Manmohan Singh intervened.
Amid unprecedented public criticism from within the ranks, the articulate lawyer-politician found support from the most unexpected quarters. It was the BJP that stood by him and appreciated his efforts vis-a-vis internal security.
“The nation, the opposition and home minister want to fight the Maoists. But the government has contradictory views. Generals do not walk out of the battle. We support Chidambaram in whatever strong measures he wants to tackle Maoism,” BJP leader Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha.
Chidambaram, who has repeatedly offered the Maoist talks if they abjured violence, has attributed his failure to overcome Maoists to the “limited mandate” he has. Security experts took it to mean that he wanted to go for the kill and use maximum force.
He has found few takers within and outside the government for the proposal.
“What has he done with the mandate he has?” asked Ajay Sahni, a security analyst who runs the South Asia Terrorism Portal, who added that the minister had “not done enough” with the available resources.
“You are asking for more powers, do you want to be the dictator, do you want to be the field marshal of this country?” Sahni told Inditop. “Only thing we need is a better better strategy. You have to win a war. Learn how to win it.”
