Ananth Kumar- Voice of Karnataka in the Indian Parliament falls silent
- In Current Affairs
- 10:52 AM, Nov 13, 2018
- Kishor Narayan
H N Ananth Kumar, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Government of India passed away at the age of 59 in Bengaluru in the wee hours of Monday. His untimely demise has left many in the state and entire nation in a state of grief and shock. As tributes pour from around the country, here’s a look at the life and persona of the ever-smiling gentle giant from Karnataka.
Born into a poor Brahmin family on Jul 22, 1959, in a tiny village Hegganahalli in Bangalore Rural district to Sri H N Narayana Shastri and Smt Girija, Ananth Kumar did his primary schooling there. Owing to his father working in Indian Railways, the family had to shift to Hubli in North Karnataka when his father was transferred. It was here that Ananth Kumar spent most of his formative years. Finishing his school, he pursued BA and LLB in Hubli. All along, he indulged in student politics and was a key member of ABVP in college. Participating in the protests against the emergency, Ananth Kumar was imprisoned for 30 days. Owing to his sharp wit and political acumen, he rose through the ranks in ABVP and was appointed the State Secretary of ABVP in quick time. By 1985, he was already the national secretary of ABVP. Not many know that Hubli had an Idgah Maidan where the Indian national flag was never hoisted since Independence. When this issue heated up in late 80s and early 90s, Ananth Kumar went ahead and hoisted the national flag in the Maidan along with Uma Bharti.
With his education completed, Ananth Kumar shifted his base to Bangalore, as it was known then, and this enabled him to join the Bharatiya Janata Party. With Bangalore as his base, Ananth Kumar became a known face in the state unit of the party. He even participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
With the rise of the BJP in the Hindi belt across North India, Bangalore South Lok Sabha constituency was slowly turning out to be a citadel for BJP. Prof K Venkatagiri Gowda, an eminent economist had represented this constituency in 1991 by defeating R Gundu Rao, a Brahmin and former Chief Minister, despite the caste card playing against him in the constituency. Bangalore South even to this day has a high percentage of Brahmins. By 1996, Prof Gowda had fallen out of favour with the BJP top brass as he had praised P V Narasimha Rao for his bold decisions to revive Indian economy. BJP needed a worthy candidate to retain the prestigious seat and it turned towards Ananth Kumar who was a political novice and had not occupied any political office until then.
Ananth Kumar won his first election by defeating the widow of Gundu Rao, Smt. Varalakshmi Gundu Rao by over 20 thousand votes and thus started his uninterrupted journey of political victories. He won from the coveted constituency 5 more times. Although each time the naysayers would doubt his ability to retain the seat, he only managed to increase the gap between him and the nearest opponent (always the Congress candidate). In fact, in the 2014 elections he was up against Nandan Nilekani. Nilekani himself was no stranger to the constituency and was already a household name as the co-founder of Infosys. In fact, Bangalore South constituency houses Infosys head office and also, it can be said that many Infosys engineers and staff would form the electorate of Bengaluru South. Despite such an obvious advantage to Nilekani, Ananth Kumar romped home by a whopping margin of nearly 2.28 lakhs. This was his 6th consecutive victory from Bengaluru South. He had truly established himself as an undisputed champion MP from Bengaluru South.
His growth politically was noticed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and rewarded with a ministerial berth in both the 1998 and the 1999 governments. In fact, Ananth Kumar was the youngest among all ministers in the 1998 union cabinet. He managed to get extremely close to LK Advani and was even considered to be Advani’s blue-eyed boy in Karnataka. Despite being out of Bangalore, he managed to work for and strengthen the party in the state. He was the president of the state unit of BJP for a brief while in 2003 and had ensured that BJP was the biggest party in the assembly elections. It was his moment of glory but an attempt to cobble up a coalition with the JDS failed and Ananth Kumar never tasted power in the state. While B S Yeddyurappa was the vote puller for the BJP in rural parts of the state, it was Ananth Kumar who would regularly return with a rich haul of Vidhan Sabha seats from Bangalore region election after election. Naturally word went out that Yeddyurappa and Ananth Kumar were out to cut the other down to size. Many a times, it was believed that the downs witnessed by the party in the state were due to the infighting between these two leaders. But these were never proven beyond doubt and the two leaders always sang great laurels of each other in public.
Perhaps it was his perceived closeness to the Prime Ministers Vajpayee and Modi and Dy PM Advani that he was never considered seriously as a contender for the top post in his home state either by his party colleagues or by the electorate. Probably the electorate considered him to be the state’s representative in BJP’s power circles in Delhi. Probably another reason was the presence of B S Yeddyurappa in Karnataka. In any other time, age or context, H N Ananth Kumar’s name would have topped all surveys as the preferred CM candidate cutting across party lines. He was never allowed to flourish unhindered in his home state and therefore the people can only wonder what if.
He was the face of urban literate electorate in Bangalore. In 1998, he was the first politician in the country to have his own website to spread his message across to the electorate. He was also up to date about the problems faced by the ever-expanding city he represented. He was aware of the dizzying heights to which Bengaluru had scaled and he as its representative wanted to provide it with the best infrastructure to aid its growth.
He spoke very less in Karnataka. In fact, Kannadigas don’t recall him to be an orator. Rather, he was identified as a man of action back home in Bengaluru. He was instrumental in quickening the pace at which the Bangalore International Airport was built while he was the Civil Aviation Minister. He started an NGO named Adamya Chetana (meaning indomitable spirit) along with his wife fellow ABVP activist Tejaswini in the memory of his mother and is now supplying mid day meals to close to 2 lakh school children across various parts of Bengaluru. Aware of the city fast losing its green cover, Adamya Chetana initiated “Green Bengaluru” with an aim to increase the tree to human ratio from an abysmal 1:7 to 1:1. He termed this movement as Sasyagraha and had plans to take this initiative pan India.
That was the exact opposite to how he was perceived in New Delhi and elsewhere in the country where he was perceived to be a sweet talking ever smiling gentle person who had friends across the political aisle. Never to bad mouth any politician and never to talk out of turn, his mild manners won him many friends. It was this skill that made him the Parliamentary Affairs Minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet while already holding charge of Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. He was responsible for distribution of neem-coated urea to the farmers across the country. It is to his credit that ever since he took charge of the ministry, there has been no violence reported during distribution of urea to the farmers – a feat unheard of previously. In addition, he was responsible for capping the prices of heart stents, easy & wide availability of generic drugs through Jan Aushadhi Kendras across the country. Ananth Kumar was the chief implementer for many of Narendra Modi’s flagship programs.
He was a voice of Karnataka in the Indian parliament. Whenever there was a need for him to stand up to protect the interests of Karnataka, he would always be at the forefront in Parliament. His interventions in Lok Sabha regarding issues like Kaveri river water sharing, raising of Alamatti dam height, diversion of water from Mahadayi river water for drinking purposes, protesting the excesses of Maharashtra Ekikaran Samithi in the border town of Belagavi against native Kannadiga population had made him a household name across the state and had won him many admirers. When it came to standing up for causes related to Kannada or Karnataka in Delhi, he was always seen as the leader of 28 representatives from Karnataka in Lok Sabha. Many CMs cutting across party lines would discuss issues with him to chalk out strategy to ensure justice would be meted out to the state. If the issue related to Karnataka, for him, there was no party politics involved.
In the opposite direction too, Ananth Kumar was a voice of central BJP leadership back in Karnataka. For many of the rallies conducted by Narendra Modi in Bengaluru and elsewhere in Karnataka, Ananth Kumar would act as the translator. He was instrumental in explaining the flagship schemes and their advantages to the electorate of the state and winning their approval. BJP should be ever grateful to him for aiding in taking Modi’s message to the common man across the state.
Ananth Kumar has yet another first to his credit. In 2012 while addressing the 67th United Nations General Assembly, he began his speech by wishing everyone present in the hall in Kannada. He thus became the first person to talk in General Assembly in Kannada.
Politically, the demise of Ananth Kumar leaves a great vacuum for the BJP in Bengaluru South region. It may be recalled that earlier in the year, another popular politician Vijay Kumar, a 2-time MLA from Jayanagar constituency had died (Jayanagar Assembly Constituency is a part of Bengaluru South Lok Sabha Constituency) and the party was unable to retain the seat. The citadel of Jayanagar was brought down by the might of the alliance of JDS and Congress. One feels that, similarly, the party is now in danger of losing its fortress of Bengaluru South. With low voter turnouts in the city in the 2018 assembly elections, poor showing by the party and also a lackluster performance by the local leadership of the party in the city, the party would have hoped that Ananth Kumar would be able to galvanise the party and keep the fortress impregnable even during 2019 elections. Now it’s anyone’s guess to say that the party will find it difficult to maintain its dominance across the 4 Lok Sabha seats spread across Bengaluru.
In Delhi too, the absence of Ananth Kumar will be acutely felt in the corridors of Lok Sabha. His ability to work with opposition leaders to get the parliament to function despite the threats of logjams was appreciated by one and all. His wit and perseverance had prevailed on more than one occasion ensuring that the lower house of parliament would function unhindered.
The sudden demise of Ananth Kumar has eerie similarities to the demise of Pramod Mahajan in 2016. Mahajan was a strategist par excellence for the BJP both in Maharashtra and also in Delhi. Many in the party feel that his loss is felt even to this day by the party. It needs to be seen if the party can recover from yet another loss of a strategist.
Nobody referred to Ananth Kumar as either Ananth anna or as Ananth appa – a common trend in Karnataka. He was never seen with a coterie of people standing behind him eager to chant victory slogans or to clap for every statement of his. In an era of Karnataka politics, where a politician’s popularity is measured by all of the above, Ananth Kumar trusted his belief in his ideology and in his hard work.
Karnataka never openly spoke about its representative-in-chief in Delhi with admiration and adulation that he so richly deserved as he was always the man out of everyone’s sights in far away national capital. He was always perceived as the crisis man in Delhi but was never seen in houses or in alleys within the state. In his death however, Karnataka has realized the persona and legacy of the gentle giant. Tear filled moist eyes across the state are today paying rich tributes to him.
Ananth Kumar was never a man who would seek attention to himself. His hard work and perseverance gave him the recognition all through his life. In his death too, he has quietly and quickly moved on, without seeking any attention. He never went behind power, fame or adulation. They came behind him – more as byproducts of his achievements. Ananth Kumar’s legacy is aptly summarized by the name of the NGO he started – Adamya Chetana – indomitable spirit.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. MyIndMakers is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of MyindMakers and it does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
Comments