In my earlier post about the appointment of Ms.Pratibha Patil, I had made an assessment that she is a rounded person with interests in business and sports and subsequent news showed that i was hasty!

It has come to light that Ms.Patil’s sugar factory owes about Rs.17+ crores to a bank and it has been due for quite a few years.  While it is not unusual for business enterprises to have such huge debts, it is not becoming of a Presidential candidate to come from such a background.  While it might be argued (and it has been) that she resigned as a director a few years back on account of her becoming the Governer of Rajasthan, it does not absolve her of the moral and fiduciary  responsibility!  Moral Politics might be an oxymoron but Ceaser’s wife must be above board, especially if she is to become the Country’s First Lady!

As if this were not enough, there is an allegation that her brother has been responsible for the murder of a person belonging to the party.  Again, it is not a personal issue but if it comes out that she has been shielding her brother from the clutches of law and deterring enforcement, that would be a really bad precedent.

All the same, if it comes out that there is some personal involvement on her side on both counts, then that will endear her more to the political parties!!

The long wait is over and it is now open!

No I’m not talking about Sivaji movie but about a much more serious and important matter: the Presidential Elections.

When the announcement was made, the first question that was on everybody’s minds was ‘Who’s this Pratibha Patil?’. The credit for bringing an almost anonymous person to the Nation’s highest office really goes to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party, the UPA Allies and the Leftists, in that order.

Barring some unforeseen circumstances, Pratibha Patil will be the next occupant of Rashtrapathi Bhavan. Although this discussion is purely academic, it is very relevant.

All of us know that the President is only an icon and a figurehead in our system. There are no major advantages for any particular sector by having their representative as the President. I cannot recall any significant benefits for the Sikhs during Giani Zail Singh’s term, to Tamils (and Brahmins) when R Venkataraman was the President, to Dalits whilst R Narayan’s tenure or to Muslims in the incumbent’s term. So to term Pratibha Patil’s candidature as a major victory for womanhood can at best be an election slogan.

Obviously, being a female candidate would have helped minimize the opposition from allies and the lefts, but there is more to it than what meets the eye. If we stretch our memory just five years back, the person who opposed Dr.Kalam was a lady by name Ms.Lakshmi Sahgal who served in Subash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army but that time the Congress party’s zeal for secularism outweighed their passion for equality of Women and hence it supported Dr.Kalam’s candidature. So it cannot be that the new found love for the fairer sex was the ultimate swinger in Ms.Patil’s favour.

Why did the power coterie suggest a relative non-entity (although she was a deputy chairperson in Rajya sabha a few years back, she was mostly confined to Maharashtra) as the Presidential candidate discounting a few heavyweights such as Shivraj Patil, Dr Karan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee? Ms.Patil is not a politician in the reckoning for otherwise she would not have taken a gubernatorial post in Rajasthan (Governors are normally politicians being given the kick upstairs) . So it is not about being a politician either.

That she stood by Ms.Indira Gandhi’s side post emergency is being cited as a factor for her candidature but I really doubt if that would make much difference in the current context almost 23 years after Ms.Gandhi’s assasination and 30 years after the Emergency!!

Going by the turn of events as reported by the media, Ms.Patil seems to be a compromise candidate that met with the least resistance from the UPA Allies and the Left. The above factors may have helped but there surely is something that I am not able to place my finger on, that would have got her onto the list in the first place.

When I read about Ms.Patil in wikipedia, I was astonished to find that she is a very accomplished person and has been elected to the Maharashtra Assembly continously for 23 years from 1962. She has served in the Maharashtra Cabinet under several Chief Ministers in a wide variety of portfolios such as Education, Tourism, Social Welfare and Housing. She was also elected to the Rajya Sabha and to the Lok Sabha. From her profile, she also appears to be a fairly rounded person having interests in business (founder and chairperson of a sugar factory in Jalgaon, Maharashtra) and sports (table tennis champion in college). She is a Post Graduate and a Lawyer by qualification.

Anyway, if Sonia Gandhi, purely by virtue of being the Rajiv’s wife (and no other qualification) is calling the shots in the country, then Pratibha Patil is certainly and eminently qualified to be the next President of India.

Please join me in welcoming the Next President!