If ever there was a prominent Indian politician who epitomised the phrase “bundle of contradictions,” it was none other than George Fernandes, former Union Railway and Defence Minister and nine-time member of the Lok Sabha, who passed away on the morning of January 29 at the age of 88, after having been bedridden for a few years with Alzheimer’s disease.
Having worked briefly as a proof-reading journalist in the Times of India newspaper, Fernandes organised unions of taxi drivers in Mumbai. He rose to prominence in 1967 when he electorally defeated the then Congress strongman S K Patil from the South Mumbai Lok Sabha constituency and earned for himself the description “George, the giant killer.”
Fernandes...
more... became the face of the anti-Emergency movement after he was jailed by the Indira Gandhi government for “provoking” railway locomotive workers to strike work in 1974. The picture of a defiant man in handcuffs, clad in kurta-pyjama, was splashed across posters. After the March 1977 general elections, he became Industry Minister in the Morarji Desai government after he won the Muzaffarpur Lok Sabha seat in Bihar. He compared businesspersons with vermin at a meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Fernandes’ best-known act during this stint was when he threw out computer multinational IBM (formerly International Business Machines) and Coca-Cola for not diluting their shareholding in their Indian associate companies. In a 1988 interview with the Indian Express, he said: “People keep saying that I threw out Coke but I was well within law to ask them about the formula they were so secretive about. The Indian legislation stated that in such a situation I could either ask them to go out or dilute their equity to 49 per cent and they opted for the first.”
Subsequently, the same ardent exponent of so-called swadeshi economics pushed through a controversial technical collaboration agreement between German engineering giant Siemens and the public sector power equipment manufacturer, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL). The agreement was pushed through in the teeth of opposition from BHEL’s employees.
For a decade thereafter, Fernandes did what he was arguably best at – playing the role of an antagonist to those in positions of power. He returned to the Union government when he became Railways Minister in the 1989-90 Janata Dal government led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh. In this period, work was expedited on building the Konkan Railway connecting Mumbai to Mangalore.
(Compiled using various journalist columns)
