Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar doesn't ordinarily give an interview. But even when he has agreed on one, he starts with questions, not answers.
Will his government have to place an advertisement in The Telegraph for being interviewed? Will there be questions about his personal life? Will there be questions about Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who railed against his government in a recent rally in the state capital of Agartala as Trinamul Congress seeks to dislodge the CPI(M) from power in Tripura in the next Assembly elections barely one-and-a-half years away?
"We have no money left for advertisements after the Centre has curtailed our allotment by at least Rs 1,700 crore. And I won't answer any questions about my personal life or any Opposition leader," the chief minister says, explaining his questions.
The 67-year-old leader, wearing crisp white kurta and pyjama and brown sandals, beams approvingly when I say "no" to the first question and "maybe" to the others.
I take his smile to be a nod and ask him straight off what I always wanted to know - how he ended the three-decade-long insurgency that had wracked the tiny northeastern state bordering Bangladesh.
"This was the first question Narendra Modi asked me when he first visited Tripura at my invitation shortly after he took over as Prime Minister. He asked me to send him a note detailing my experience," Sarkar says, adding he has already done so. "The Centre wanted to see if they could learn anything from what has come to be known as the Tripura model."
A member of CPI(M)'s politburo, the party's highest decision-making body, Sarkar has been known for his pragmatic approach in governance, a fact both his political friends and foes concede, have kept him in power in Tripura since 1998.
It is his pragmatism that was evident when he adopted and followed through with the carrot and stick approach to tackle insurgency.
Sarkar says it will take him "all day" to narrate the details of how he quieted the guns that once boomed across Tripura, a state made up of only eight districts and less than four million people.
The chief minister says his government, after coming to power in 1998, devised a three-pronged strategy to deal with the separatists who demanded an "independent Tripura".
"First, we fought them politically, with our party running a campaign in tribal areas. We also regularly met the parents, brothers, sisters and wives of the militants and urged them to bring back their loved ones who had gone astray, explaining the futility of their struggle."
At the same time, the government carried out development projects in tribal areas on a war footing, building roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. "We also asked security forces to take any action they wanted without harassing innocent people since that would be counter-productive," Sarkar reveals.
The strategy paid off. The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), which tracks insurgency, has even declared Tripura "the most peaceful state in the Northeast".
Sarkar chose peace over ideology on another front. Much to the consternation of his party leaders and Left allies, he invited Prime Minister Modi to inaugurate the second unit of a gas-based power plant in Tripura, the foundation stone of which had been laid by Manmohan Singh. "I am a CM and he is a PM. What's wrong with a chief minister inviting the prime minister to his state?'' he asks, feigning incredulity. "As long as he is PM, we need to speak to him and discuss our problems with him," he stresses, defending his decision.
Sarkar who is chief minister of a land-locked, geographically isolated state has reason to be on the right side of the Centre. Once a princely state, Tripura, with Bangladesh on its three sides and Assam and Mizoram on the other, looks to Delhi virtually for everything, from national highway to air connectivity to exploitation of the natural gas the state is endowed with.
"We suffered most when India became independent in 1947. The mainland we used for centuries to move or travel through became a different country, first East Pakistan and then Bangladesh," Sarkar says. "We also faced a huge refugee influx from the other side of the border following Partition."
Only a month ago, Tripura, a mountainous state with a strong tribal population that lives harmoniously with the majority Bengalis, was put on the railway map of India. Railway minister Suresh Prabhu flagged off the first train to Delhi from Agartala via Guwahati. "We got it after a protracted struggle. I have gone to jail thrice demanding railways," Sarkar says.
In fact, for long, flying has been the only way for the people of Tripura to travel within the country. But thanks to a "co-operative" Centre, air traffic has gone up considerably - 18 flights operate from Agartala daily. "We have urged the Centre to make it an international airport so we have flights to Bangladesh and other countries in Southeast Asia,'' Sarkar says.
Tripura has long been a Left bastion - Nripen Chakraborty formed the first Left Front government in 1978 and the CPI(M) has been in power in the state ever since, except for five years (1988 to 1993) when the Congress won the Assembly elections. But unlike many CPI(M) leaders in and outside Tripura, Manik Sarkar does not wear his ideology on his sleeves.
No portraits of Marx or Lenin hang from walls of the room on the third-floor of the state secretariat in Agartala, where he meets me. Only a black-and-white portrait of Rabindranath Tagore stares down from the wall, cooled by a Hitachi split air-conditioner just above it. But there is a lot of red in the room. A red plaque on a coffee table reads "chief minister" in Bengali. A red clock ticks away on the wall and a red telephone squats on a small table beside him.
I ask him about the rise and rise of the Left in Tripura. "This is such a vast subject. It calls for a special session," he says, with a laugh.
Although pre-independent Tripura had a small Communist party, it had close ties with the Jana Shiksha Samity, a popular outfit formed to spread education in tribal areas. As the royals cracked down on the samity leaders, Sarkar says the samity was renamed Upajati Ganamukti Parishad, which fought with red flags and raised Marxist slogans as they tried to counter the royal onslaughts. They had also taken up arms to defend themselves.
In 1952, Dasarath Deb, a Communist leader from the tribal community, won the Lok Sabha poll and landed in Delhi to take oath. "The entire Parliament was stunned into silence when he sneaked in and announced himself," Sarkar says. Deb became chief minister in 1993.
"It is leaders like Biren Dutta, Dasarath Deb and Nripen Chakroborty who built the party in the state and paved the way for our government in 1998,'' says the fourth-time CM. Sarkar, too, is a product of same Left movement in the northeastern state that intensified after Partition.
Born in 1949 in a Tripura town called Udaipur, Sarkar says he first came to Agartala with his mother who wanted to learn music. He, however, returned with his mother to his hometown within a couple of years before finishing school. While in school at Udaypur, he got sucked into students' politics and joined the Communist party at the age of 19.
When he returned to Agartala a few years later to get into college, he could not do so. There was an arrest warrant against him for participating in the food movement. "I had to take admission in another college," says Sarkar, who is a commerce graduate.
Sarkar refuses to say much about his father Amulya Sarkar, who according to Wikipedia, was a tailor. All he says is that his father had nothing to do with politics. "But my sister was in the Congress. She was a Seva Dal activist."
Although termed liberal as chief minister, Manik Sarkar, party leaders say, is a conservative in that he believes in toeing the party line strictly. In fact, he was quoted as deriding the Bengal CPI(M)'s alliance with the Congress in the last Assembly polls.
Sarkar, however, says his remarks were taken out of context. "I never said anything about Bengal. I was only referring to our party strategy on the Left-democratic alternative in a party meeting in Tripura,'' he avers. But did he support the alliance between the CPI(M) and Congress in Bengal?
"I won't talk about this. Whatever I had to say, I said in our party forums," says the politburo member, his voice hardening.
But what will he say about the Mamata Banerjee rally in Agartala the other day? "I have already told you I won't comment on any Opposition leaders. Each time they lose an Assembly election, they say they will win the next," he says, a touch of scorn in his voice.
But Trinamul did replace the CPI(M) in Bengal. And Banerjee now pledges to do the same in Tripura, where a few Congress legislators including Opposition leader Sudip Roy Barman recently joined her party. "People of Tripura will decide who will come to power in the next elections and whether the so-called Bengal model will work in Tripura," pat comes the reply.
But isn't he worried? "Do I look worried," says Sarkar, transforming from a genial leader to a combative one.
To be honest, he doesn't. Power does not flow from guns in Tripura anymore. Here, one big gun calls the shots.
tetevitae
1960s: The students’ movement and the food movement push this commerce student at the Maharaja Bir Bikram
College in Agartala to the forefront of state politics
1972: Graduates from being Tripura SFI general secretary to the state committee of the CPI(M). In 1978, he is inducted into the party secretariat
1980: Elected member of the legislative assembly from Agartala. Appointed party state secretary in 1993
1998: Appointed member of the politburo, also becomes chief minister for the first time. Has been elected to the office four consecutive times
Sarkar is known for his frugal lifestyle, owns neither a car nor a house, donates salary to the party, lives off party allowance and wife’s pension.
2015: Allegations of his involvement in a chit fund scam rock the state, but then he makes bigger headlines by becoming the first CM from the Northeast to withdraw the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act imposed in the state in 1997. PM Modi asks him for a paper on how the state handled armed extremists
