There was a time when journalists writing about Nirmala Sitharaman would undoubtedly settle their gaze first on her collection of saris and her sense of dressing. In fact, women in power seemed to attract a lot of attention to what they wear whereas men are not dealt the same scrutiny. I wonder if Arun Jaitley, whose defence ministry shoes is what Nirmala Sitharaman will be slipping into, is held to his sartorial scrutiny. After all, it’s known that Jaitley is fond of his expensive collection of shawls, suits and jackets. However, it’s time now when attention is going to shift from Sitharaman’s wardrobe to her war room.
Nirmala Sitharaman turned many heads as she was sworn in as India’s second woman Defence Minister. She created a splash in the news as India’s second woman defence minister after Indira Gandhi, who held the charge of the ministry during her tenure as Prime Minister. In another first, the apex Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) will, for the first time, have two women members – Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
PM Modi’s choice of Sitharaman to be the next Defence Minister, will mean no big changes in current Indian foreign and military policy. Both Arun Jaitley and Manohar Parrikar struggled to leave a distinctive mark on the South block during their tenure.
Like her predecessors, Nirmala Sitharaman will enter the South block with limited knowledge of how unwieldy military bureaucracies function and the expectation to establish a force with the capabilities needed to meet India’s challenges in the coming years will weigh heavy on her limited tenure.
After taking charge from Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, 58, laid out her priority areas as that being military preparedness, defence indigenisation, resolving long-pending issues and the welfare of soldiers.
There was a certain solemnness to the whole occasion as a priest conducted prayers in the defence minister's chamber before Sitharaman assumed charge. Her parents were present.
Nirmala comes from a tradition where rebellions are quiet and not emphatic. Her mother’s part of the family is from Thiruvangad in Tamil Nadu. They are Tamil Iyengar Brahmins, who moved from the banks of the Cauvery to Madurai. As her father was with the Indian Railways in a transferable job, she grew up with relatives in Chennai and later Tiruchi, where she completed graduation.
The exposure to politics (and the rebellion) happened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). There she did an MA in economics, living in Godavari hostel with a clutch of friends who were Free Thinkers. She campaigned vigorously for Nalini Ranjan Mohanty for president — the election was a benchmark of sorts for politics in JNU — in the students’ union elections in 1982. He won the election, defeating the Students Federation of India (SFI), which seemed unbeatable during that time
Sitharaman was one of the students who was in a posse of Free Thinkers when it gheraoed the Vice-Chancellor’s office in protest against the sealing of a student’s room. Several students were locked up in Tihar jail. Many students mingled with fellow students who had come to see them and walked out of the jail, establishing a record of sorts in “jailbreaks”
It was in JNU that Sitharaman met her husband, Prabhakar Parakala also committed to politics, but of a different kind. Parakala’s father, Seshavataram Parakala, was a well-known Congress politician and an associate of PV Narasimha Rao. Sitharaman and he got married and she registered for a PhD dissertation (on India-Europe textile trade in the GATT framework) which she never completed because Prabhakar got a scholarship for a PhD at the London School of Economics and she couldn’t appear for the viva.
She signed up to be a salesgirl at Habitat, a home décor store on London’s Regent Street, where she won a bottle of Moët & Chandon champagne that winter because she made record Christmas sales. That was a short-lived pursuit. She moved on to the research division of PricewaterhouseCoopers. But soon after, a baby was on the way and the duo returned to India in 1991.
She set up a school in Hyderabad – a kind of alternative education setup (now given on lease). She came in touch with Sushma Swaraj and much later, was appointed to the National Commission for Women (2003-05). She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2006. When the BJP adopted 33 per cent reservation structure for women throughout the party, she was invited to join the National Executive Council. She was appointed national spokesperson in 2010 and moved from Hyderabad to Delhi.
In the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls of 2014, she became a familiar TV face of the BJP. But when she took charge of the ministry, she preferred to be rather low-key and only stepped in to do the political work when asked to do so. During the Delhi elections, Sitharaman would enlist a list of five questions a day to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal while holding press conferences from the Delhi BJP office.
What turned out in favour for Nirmala Sitaraman was the fact that she understood a complex ministry and could decode complex issues such as the WTO. Sitaraman will now be the second woman in the hallowed group of Cabinet Committee on Security besides Sushma Swaraj.
Her choice clearly projects her as a rising star in the south. Amit Shah is eyeing the southern states as he wants to offset the losses in the North where the BJP peaked in 2014 with gains in the South. With Venkaiah Naidu, the party's face in the south, moving to the VicePresident's office, Sitaraman is being seen as the one drafting BJP’s long-term strategy in southern states.
Normative and political calculations were achieved by a woman rising to the defence ministry. It was a compliment to Arun Jaitley and it also achieved cutting of height of bigger leaders like Rajnath Singh”
Her choice has sent multiple messages and has become the big takeaway of the last cabinet expansion. The BJP is eyeing women as a constituency in the run-up to 2019 and cannot be blamed for being a male-centric party. The BJP wants to break the myth of being a party of the Hindi heartland and may have found its own Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu.\
Swaraj and Sitharaman had a historic falling out over Telangana. In February 2014, Sitharaman tweeted: “If only Sushma had stood for Seemaandhra in Lok Sabha just like Venkaiah & Jaitley did today”. To this, Swaraj responded: “With spokespersons like @nsitharaman, u don’t need enemies”. Both the tweets were deleted but the damage was done. It was Swaraj who bitterly opposed Sitharaman’s entry in the Rajya Sabha.
It was Jaitley who took her under his wing and in 2014 she became the commerce minister. When the question came to entering Parliament, Naidu nixed her candidature from Andhra Pradesh. She was finally elected from Karnataka.
Nirmala Sitharaman has surely come a long way. And she has had to prove herself at every step. In just over 10 years in the party and she is part of the top three ministries. And now as defence minister, Sitharaman will sit in the Cabinet Committee on Security, in the company of Jaitley and Swaraj (and Rajnath Singh). She will have to match up to the stature of politicians like AK Antony, George Fernandes and Jagjivan Ram and the authority and political muscle they brought with them to the job.