Hot seat

After much brouhaha over Nirmala Sitharaman breaking the glass ceiling by becoming the first woman in India to be appointed a full-time defence minister, the truth behind her startling rise to power has finally come to the fore. The post of the defence minister has been rendered somewhat ornamental in the present times given constant engagement of and guidance from the national security advisor and the Prime Minister's Office. Putting a veteran politician in the seat might have involved treading on some toes. But Sitharaman was apparently not the first choice for the post. Bharatiya Janata Party insiders claim that three senior ministers, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, were informally offered the defence portfolio, but they must have known better for each of them passed up the opportunity saying that they were content with their positions. They are said to have had an unofficial meeting with Arun Jaitley, who was looking after the defence ministry before Sitharaman, to choose a suitable candidate. This is where Sitharaman's name came up. And even though Sitharaman may not have been the initial choice, all eyes are now on her to see whether she can make a difference. At present, women in the Indian armed forces can only rise to the rank of officers. Will Sitharaman be able to get women to fill all ranks of the armed forces? That indeed would set a real precedent.

Get the hint

Himanta Biswa Sarma, arguably the most powerful politician in Assam today, has been chafing under the chief minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, and dropping hints about his desire to leave the state and move to the Centre. Before the cabinet reshuffle, Sarma went so far as to tell several local journalists - not a difficult task given that he owns a media empire with several television channels that enjoy substantial penetration - that he was on his way out of Assam. Many believe that this was meant just as a veiled threat to Sonowal. With heavyweight portfolios like finance and health, and his excellent network of cross-party friendships, Sarma is often seen as the de facto CM. But it rankles Sarma that the job is officially not his. More so because he played a key role in increasing the BJP's footprint in the Northeast and considers the CM's chair his natural prize. Sarma makes no bones about his ambition or conveying that he thinks Sonowal to be a pushover. That Sarma believes there is no room for Sonowal is clearly reflected in his ministerial chamber - it only has portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Narendra Modi.

Knowledge is power

Espionage plays an important role in the dog-eat-dog world of modern politics. When Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party claimed that it had asked both its Gujarat MLAs to vote for Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha elections held last month, the Congress was sceptical. Rather, it saw some truth in the stories that surfaced about the NCP joining the BJP government in last week's cabinet reshuffle. The reason for the Congress's disbelief of the NCP's claim, one leader said, stems from the fact that in the last two years the sole agenda of the NCP leader, Praful Patel, has supposedly been to get the Maratha strongman to embrace Narendra Modi. But Pawar is in two minds. Asked about the basis of such allegations, an insider said that the Congress used its channels to find out that Patel had gotten in touch with the BJP kingmaker, Amit Shah, at least thrice in the past months. "What is shocking," he added, "is that Patel secretly met Shah in Delhi on July 26 when the deal for the Rajya Sabha elections was struck." When enquired if this could be considered spying, the prompt response was that there were no spies in the world of politics, only some "powerful agents" who know of all the goings-on in the dark underbelly of the community. But can one always trust these agents given the constant churning of the capital city's rumour mills and the half-truths and gossips that are peddled as facts? Pat came the reply: a seasoned politician knows to separate grain from chaff.

Real steel

Change may be in the air, but some things are cast in stone. Like India's caste system or the strict hierarchy among the branches of its civil services. The topic of discussion in bureaucratic circles on the day after the cabinet reshuffle that saw the induction of four retired civil servants into the government was that even the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP chief, Amit Shah, had not dared upset the pecking order. The two IAS officers, RK Singh and Alphons Kannanthanam, along with the IFS officer, Hardeep Singh Puri, were made ministers of state with independent charge while the IPS officer and former Mumbai top-cop, Satya Pal Singh, was designated junior minister in a couple of ministries. The steel frame of Indian bureaucracy sure lives up to its reputation.

FOOTNOTE

Harmless fun

There is nothing like irony to set the members of Twitterverse aflutter. The actor, Salman Khan, inaugurated a driving school in Dubai on an invitation from the teenage billionaire, Rashed Saif Belhasa aka Money Kicks. This invite is no surprise as the Instagram account of the Belhasa scion shows that he has known Khan for some time now. But for people on social media, it was an opportunity to have some fun. They came up with imaginative parallel scenarios like "Rahul Gandhi giving a speech on artificial intelligence" or the recently convicted godman, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, "inaugurating a 'nari niketan' or a women's safety centre". Of course, these comparisons were all in jest.