Hindustan Times

Dipankar Ghose

Dhrubo Jyoti

These five Indians will be remembered for their role in this era.

Vajpayee, Sonia, Manmohan: 5 key leaders

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Atal Bihari Vajpayee</h2>

<p>He was already a two-time prime minister; the figurehead of a party that would go on to dominate Indian politics; the man in charge of the government that had conducted India’s second nuclear test.</p><p>But it was truly in 1999 that Atal Bihari Vajpayee cemented his political legacy, winning an election in the wake of the fall of his own government, and becoming the prime minister that would lead the Bharatiya Janata Party to its first full term in government.</p><p> </p>

<p>It had already been a tumultuous year, what with the Lahore Declaration with Pakistan that seemed to bring the two hostile countries to a semblance of peace, broken months later by the Kargil War. The years to follow were tumultuous too. There were the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which thousands were killed and Vajpayee reminded chief minister Narendra Modi of “rajdharm” but stopped short of removing him from the post.</p><p>There was a boom in infrastructure symbolised by the completion of the Golden Quadrilateral. Many had thought that even in 2004, the winds blew in BJP’s direction, but Vajpayee lost because of an unwise India Shining campaign.</p><p>Health and age began to catch up with him. Vajpayee would never return to centrestage.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Sonia Gandhi</h2>

<p>After the assassination of her husband, prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991, Sonia Gandhi had seemed reluctant to remain in the eye of the storm. The Congress, the behemoth that dominated Indian political discourse both before and after independence, could not do without the Gandhis. The threat of balkanization of the party hovered. Still, she refused a post.</p><p>Seven years later, she changed her mind, and became a member of the Congress party. Within months, she was party president.</p>

<p>In 1999, even as BJP won the general election, she accepted the position of leader of the Opposition. And eventually, the political moment of the decade belonged to Sonia Gandhi.</p><p>When the Congress unexpectedly won the national election in 2004, Gandhi was widely expected to become prime minister. There were arguments from the Opposition that her foreign origins made her unfit for the post, but the party was behind her, and she forged a 15-party alliance as chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance. Then Gandhi refused to be PM, despite an emotional call by party workers. This paved the way for a decade of Manmohan Singh. And through that decade, Gandhi would become one of India’s most influential and powerful voices in government, from her post just outside it.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Manmohan Singh</h2>

<p>By 2004, Manmohan Singh could have argued that he was already a modern Indian legend, having guided India through multiple economic transitions — as chief economic advisor; as governor of the Reserve Bank of India; and of course, as finance minister during liberalisation, in 1991.</p><p>But in 2004, Singh took on his biggest challenge, thrust into the position of prime minister at the age of 71. The Gandhi shadow remained, if not in practice then always in perception, but Singh forged a path for himself, bringing in policy changes that have stood the tests of time and disruptive politics.</p>

<p>His first term saw the passage of the rural employment guarantee act MGNREGA, the Right to Education Act and the Right to Information Act, and he risked his government to stick to his guns and push through the 2008 civil nuclear deal with the US.</p><p>His second term as PM, from 2009 on, was decidedly less heady. Allegations of corruption plagued the government. Singh refuted the idea that he was “weak”, and said that history would be kind to him. He may well be right.</p><p> </p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Mulayam Singh Yadav</h2>

<p>By the time 2008 rolled around, Uttar Pradesh strongman Mulayam Singh Yadav was already in the autumn of his political career, his dream of one day being prime minister increasingly distant. He fought the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 and led his Samajwadi Party to become the largest party in Uttar Pradesh, with 37 of the 80 seats, but was not a part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Still, in July 2008, the fate of the national government hinged on the veteran politician, who rose from humble origins during the Mandal churn in India’s heartland. Angered by the India-US civil nuclear deal, the Left parties withdrew support from the UPA, forcing a floor test. In the messy events that followed, the government hung on by a thread, largely because of the surprise backing of Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (even though cross voting and allegations of bribery vitiated the air). The central position occupied by Yadav also indicated the might of regional parties that came to dominate the heartland in the 1990s and 2000s, and whose influence would wane soon after.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">HS Surjeet</h2>

<p>In May 2004, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its general secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, found themselves with the key to India’s future. In results that were then unprecedented, Vajpayee had fallen short, but the Congress was only the single-largest party by a whisker, and not close to majority on its own.</p>

<p>Part of the reason for that was that the parties of the Left had done so well, winning 62 seats in all, with the CPI(M) alone winning 43, its highest-ever tally.</p><p>The Congress reached out to Surjeet to build a consensus around prime minister Manmohan Singh. Eventually, Somnath Chatterjee of the CPI(M) was made speaker of the Lok Sabha. The 15-party United Progressive Alliance was born, with the Communist Party as a key member.</p><p>The Left eventually backed out of the alliance, in 2008, after disagreements with Singh over the US civil nuclear deal. At which point Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party saved the government, and the BJP was kept out of power.</p><p>Surjeet stepped down as CPI(M) general secretary in 2005, a year after his starring role. That party has not seen another heady heyday and was reduced to a total of three Lok Sabha seats in 2019.</p>