THE DAY OF THE FIXER...IT’S THE SHELF LIFE, STUPID!

THE fixer has become a fixture in the shadowy world of Indian governance. Even though this unique position finds no mention in the official lexicography of India’s polity, it has come to occupy an institutionalized status in the affairs of state. The individual occupants, however, have a shelf life. While they are needed, they are larger than life, more powerful than politicians, more omniscient than bureaucrats. Through channels unknown to Ministers, by the gift of the gab, through the knowledge of murky financial and personal secrets, through pretensions to guru-dom, through cajolery, blackmail and charm, they move mountains that Prime Ministers, Finance Ministers, Chief Ministers once thought unfeasible to budge.
Ultimately, however, these conjurers of the art of the impossible live out their life cycles. Some fade away without a whimper. Others, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their proxy-power, try to play for keeps by securing party positions or nominations to Parliament or starting successful businesses. Yet, no matter what garb they don later, they cannot metamorphose. They are like Cain, marked. They are never accepted into the true brotherhood – or oligarchy, if you will – of the very politicians, bureaucrats, and industrialists for whom they performed miracles. Despite his dynamism, brilliance in wile, network of friends, ability to throw upmarket soirées, bevy of glamorous women, when the time of the fixer is up, it is up. Ultimately, he is no more than a facilitator with neither dynastic nor grassroots mooring. He is a dealmaker. And when there are no more deals, or when he sees himself as kingmaker – or (heaven forbid!) king himself – he is dispensable. Like a wad of sullied tissue paper.
With the story of erstwhile Samajwadi Party supremo Amar Singh still fresh in the mind, Inderjit Badhwar and Anil Tyagi look at the phenomenon of facilitators and their impact on Indian governance.

Amar Singh... the historical cog
IN the saga of facilitators, the career of Rajya Sabha MP and industrialist Amar Singh is not as unique as it is made out to be. Despite the fact that he played a massively powerful role – using all the political, persuasive, PR skills at his command – in helping push through the Indo-US nuclear deal for the ruling party, his rise and eclipse as a fixer have followed predictable patterns. Had he had the sense of humour to view himself as no more than one more historical cog in the endlessly turning wheel of India’s murky politics, he would probably have been able to avoid the hubris from which emanates, now, so much sorrow over betrayals by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, Jaya Bachchan and, not least, Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose government he saved from collapse after the Left pulled the plug.


Amar Singh’s speciality lay in combining politics with a glamour quotient. He picked this up from Subrata Roy. He learned about the importance of the facilitator while working unofficially as a liaison man for KK Birla and Shobhana Bhartiya.

Amar Singh’s persona, however, was special – a cut high above the wheelers and dealers who have preceded him on the stage of power. He was, and is, a great listener, feisty, never servile or pusillanimous. He learned about the importance of the facilitator while working unofficially as a liaison man for KK Birla, Shobhana Bhartiya, and her husband, Shyam: He learned that even KK, whose family had virtually bankrolled the Congress party from its inception, and his media-savvy and socially active daughter, Shobhana, could do very little themselves to move the bureaucracy or Ministries, whether in matters of newsprint purchase, industrial licensing changes, or achieving price decontrol for molasses in Gajraula (Uttar Pradesh) factories run by KK’s son-in-law, the dashing, Errol Flynn-moustachioed Shyam, or helping Shobhana get rid of white elephant Home TV (ultimately purchased by Amar Singh confidant Subrata Roy of Sahara). They all needed middle men with extraordinary powers of persuasion at every level of government.
It was from late hotelier Lalit Suri, a friend of Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi, and a recipient of land for Bharat Hotels as a real estate boondoggle from the Congress party, and a monopoly outlet for Maruti cars, that Amar Singh picked up the finer part of durbar politics, and the art of raising and distributing party finances fairly without annoying the top. As he became “dispensable” to the Birla clan with liberalization picking up, he veered closer to the Thakur brigade that ran Mandal politics, including Amethi Raja Sanjay Singh and Mulayam Singh who picked up the reins of UP’s Yadav politics after Congressman Vir Bahadur Singh’s untimely demise.
Amar Singh’s speciality lay in combining politics with a glamour quotient. Some say he picked this up from Subrata Roy, the one-time flamboyant and now somewhat reclusive “Sahara Shree” of the Sahara group whose entire business USP was a combination of low-to-mid-income non-banking financial “bhaiyya” depositors from eastern UP and Bihar along with the glamour of the Bachhans, Sushmita Sen, Raj Babbar, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, Subhash Ghai, Aishwarya Rai and Swapna Bannerjee. Others claim that Amar Singh was a fanatical Bollywood buff and star autograph-hunter from childhood. He could rattle off film dialogue after having seen the movie just once. It was Amar Singh, his friends say, who came to Amitabh Bachchan’s aid, with no strings attached, when the Big B’s ABCL Ltd was in trouble and the superstar was in debt. They claim that Amar Singh was Subrata Roy’s Bollywood connection, and not the other way around.
Similarly, there’s debate about who brought the Ambanis into the Mulayam Singh camp. Subrata Roy’s friends say that “Sahara Shree” was greatly admired by the late Dhirubhai Ambani who often sought his advice on how to maintain company discipline as well as on investment matters. Anyway, the story is that UP needed investment and a good image, Mulayam loved Amar Singh, Amar Singh loved Amitabh, Dhirubhai (and later Anil Ambani who set up a power project in Dadri on the Delhi-UP border), Subrata Roy, and Aishwarya Rai like a daughter and Abhishek Bachchan like a son. And they all came together as one big happy family.
Until, one day, Amar Singh found himself dispensed with. Political analysts like Vir Sanghvi are guessing that Amar Singh will be back in the Samajwadi Party, larger than life. Gourmet Sanghvi forgets that once you suck the pulp off the mango seed, you don’t put the seed back in your mouth. You spit it out. To change the metaphor, it’s the shelf life, stupid!

Kapoor and Dhawan... the dancing needles
THE facilitator emerges, struts about the stage and then, poof! He vanishes like Cinderella’s fairy godmother’s pumpkin carriage. In post-Independence Indian politics the culture of the top wheeler-dealer took root in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s time. She needed personally loyal fixers to ward off and survive the onslaughts of the Congress Old Guard led by stalwarts like Morarji Desai and Jagjivan Ram. Enter Yashpal Kapoor. This PA-like character understood the symbolic emanation of power. He kept Chief Ministers as also senior bureaucrats waiting outside his house for hours for a five-minute audience. For 16 uninterrupted years Kapoor managed the affairs of the PMO, along with RK Dhawan. Dhawan, with his boyish Punjabi looks and Karol Bagh accent, a determined moustache, and a shock of black hair that fell over his forehead, was the political secretary and chief of staff. They enjoyed the untrammelled confidence of Mrs Gandhi because they never exceeded their brief and knew how to kowtow to Sanjay Gandhi’s extra-constitutional authority.


Dhawan had a boyish Punjabi look and Karol Bagh accent,a shock of black hair fell over his forehead. He enjoyed the untrammelled confidence of Mrs Gandhi because he never exceeded his brief and knew how to kow-tow to Sanjay.

Dhawan’s influence, however, never carried into the Rajiv Gandhi years. He was like a beached whale and later faced opprobrium when the Thakkar Commission of Inquiry into Indira Gandhi’s assassination pointed the “needle of suspicion” at Dhawan for allegedly changing the guard’s duties on the day she was shot. The last image of Dhawan that people remember was that of a bald aging man – tonsured in a religious ceremony – walking out of Tirupati.
While the Kapoor-Dhawan duo managed Mrs Gandhi’s appointments and guarded her political manoeuvres from sabotage, a facilitator from Bihar, Lalit Narain Mishra, emerged. Few people know that Mishra discovered the talent of Dr Manmohan Singh. The latter was first appointed by Mishra as an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Mishra became so powerful that, with Yashpal Kapoor’s help, he dethroned Haryana Chief Minister Bhagwat Dayal Sharma and managed to get Bansi Lal appointed.
Lal never looked back. He did not need to, backed as he was by one of Mrs Gandhi’s most powerful secret fund raisers with influence in industrial houses and dominant bureaucratic circles. According to Mitrokhin Archive, money was paid by the KGB to the Congress party through conduits like Railway Minister Lalit Narain Mishra, who was also said to have accepted large bribes from the KGB. He died mysteriously in a bomb blast at Samastipur, Bihar, in 1975.

Brahmachari... the yogi as commissar
POLITICIANS and babus were not the only ones who qualified during this great era of fixers. Yogis also had their say. The most formidable among them was Dhirendra Brahmachari who was born in a village, Dhanushi Chanpura, in Madhubani, Bihar. Brahmachari left home at the age of 13 to study at Varanasi before parachuting into Delhi’s power corridors and becoming a top acolyte of Mrs Gandhi.


A row of imported cars was regularly parked at Brahmachari’s ashram in Friends Colony. His lust for power, pelf and women was unparalleled. He seduced his contacts with his resounding voice, persona and the mystique of his brand of yoga.

He died in 1994 when his private plane crashed, an event still shrouded in mystery. Those who have witnessed that era can recall how a long row of imported cars was regularly parked at his ashram in Delhi’s Friends Colony. His lust for power, pelf and women was unparalleled. He seduced most of his contacts with his resounding voice, persona and the mystique surrounding his brand of yoga. He enjoyed privileged entry at Mrs Gandhi’s residence. He amassed unaccounted wealth and set up a gun manufacturing factory and five-star yoga centres in Mantalai (J&K). But he never aspired to be a politician.

Capt Sharma... piloting more than one ship
DURING the Rajiv Gandhi years the long arm of liaison reached all the way to New York. This was way before NRIs became politically “in” and PIO and OCI cards were given out in recognition of the Indian diaspora’s collective political clout on behalf of the mother country. Certain trusted loyalists were assigned fund-raising tasks for the Congress party as well as looking after its leaders’ interests in foreign deals. One such operator was Kamal Dandona. This New York-based entrepreneur was known for his generosity, his ready raucous laughter, strings of gold chains around his neck, gaudy Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned to display a hairy chest, and solid gold rings on both hands. Dandona was considered the Man Friday of the Hinduja brothers who were trying to make inroads into Rajiv Gandhi’s coterie.
Operators like Dandona were obsessively secretive about their meetings with Rajiv Gandhi, admitting at most to having had his “blessing” to start a wing of the Congress party in the US. Until the Bofors scandal surfaced, Dandona visited Delhi almost evey other month.Perfunctorily, at least, he was constantly in touch with Rajiv’s long-standing PAs, Vincent George and Madhavan. Actually, he reported directly to Capt Satish Sharma, Rajiv’s former airline pilot buddy (now MP) who managed Rajiv’s constituency and acted as personal secretary and confidant. Sharma was also trusted by Rajiv to disburse party funds to favoured candidates and his Dutch wife, Sterre, was an artist who was a personal friend of Sonia Gandhi. Actually, Dandona had a dual reporting assignment – the other one to Lalit Suri (with whom Sharma had a love-hate relationship), the charming, generous-to-a-fault, genial hotelier who managed and financed the entire transportation logistics for the Congress party during elections. Even though the mostly affable Suri had a bad temper after drinking, he was best known for not having made political enemies and his largesse often stretched to other parties, including the BJP. Indeed, he was a great source of political intelligence for Rajiv. He was easy to talk to, and people from all parties talked to him. Just before VP Singh broke with Rajiv and the Congress party over the HDW submarine and Bofors issues to form the Jan Morcha, Suri was the main person involved in trying to manage a last-minute patch-up. Until his sudden death in a London casino, Suri continued to be courted by Congress bigwigs like Oscar Fernandes, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel.


Dandona (right) had a dual reporting assignment– one to Lalit Suri (left), the charming, generous-to-a-fault, genial hotelier who managed and financed the entire transportation logistics for the Congress party during elections

Dandona was a big party-giver. His New York bashes included Bollywood superstars, US Senators and Congressmen, visiting Indian politicians and dignitaries, and Hollywood biggies like Sharon Stone and Richard Gere. Whenever Dandona visited Delhi, he came armed with photo albums bearing tesimony to his ascent of New York’s party ladder. These albums impressed Delhi’s politicians and bureaucrats to no small extent.
Another compulsive album-displayer (Lord this ... and Lady that … and Sir this … and His Excellency that …) who made a bid to influence Delhi’s power circles because of his proximity to Capt Sharma and, to an extent, Lalit Suri, was the burly, overweight Panjab University-educated London based Rajpal Choudhury (“Chow”). Whenever he travelled in Manhattan, he used a black stretched Cadillac or Lincoln limousine equipped with a stereo and bar. He once published a magazine called Delhi Recorder. Though this was never confirmed, sources in the government say many of Choudhury’s overseas activities were financed by funds from India’s Cabinet Secretariat and that his information was passed on directly or indirectly to Rajiv Gandhi’s coterie.

Pinaki and the Swami... Rasputin and the law
ANY twist or change in India’s domestic political equations usually brings to the fore a bevy of fixers. Always one to be counted on is the ubiquitous lawyer, Pinaki Misra. His high point in palace politics was when PV Narasimha Rao became PM. But, with the ease of a chameleon, he switched loyalties between individuals, parties and leaders. He is a low-profile facilitator who knows how to move to the right place at the right time. He was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha during Narasimha Rao’s tenure on a Congress ticket from Orissa with the help of JB Patnaik. Now a Member of the 15th Lok Sabha, he is a confidant of Orissa CM Navin Patnaik. He is reportedly Patnaik’s Man Friday in Delhi. Misra learnt the art of hobnobbing with politicians and bureaucrats from his one-time ring master, the infamous Nemi Chand Jain alias Chandra Swami. The latter, who has been in and out of jail, is considered one of the shrewdest and most malign influences in modern India’s hall of influence peddling infamy. Born in Rajasthan, this veritable Rasputin rose to power during Janata Party rule. He travelled in private planes with Biju Patnaik, Devi Lal and Karpoori Thakur, and hobnobbed with Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. He has holidayed and partied with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Brunei, former Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari and Washington socialite Steve Martindale, swinging international deals back and forth.


Misra (left) represented Chandra Swami (right), who has been in and out of jail and is considered one of the shrewdest and most malign influences in modern India’s hall of influence-peddling infamy.

He hit it big when Narasimha Rao became PM, having uninterrupted access to the PM’s house. Cabinet Ministers and top bureaucrats lined up at his Safdarjung Development Area residence to curry favour. He, too, had a shelf life.

The Q... catch as catch can
FACILITATORS share one quality: the insight – or foresight – to spot the political geniuses of the country. Jayant Malhotra and his wife, Badola, a business couple from Mumbai, set their sights on Dalit leader Kanshi Ram and his protégé, Mayawati. Initially, this shrewd couple had backed Ramakrishna Hegde, former Karnataka CM, and former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar as separate horses. They later shifted their sights to UP where they not only, to begin with, funded the BSP, but later also gifted a sea-facing flat in Mumbai to the party chief. So it was natural that, during Mayawati’s first stint as CM, Jayant Malhotra enjoyed tremendous power and the fruits that went with it.
The Rajiv Gandhi era saw another prodigious international power-player descend on Delhi: an Italian named Ottavio Quattrocchi. As word of mouth had it, shivers would run down the spines of Ministers when Quattrocchi was on the line. They danced to his tunes. Quattrocchi wielded such influence with the PMO that most bureaucrats would stand up behind their desks when he visited them. It is also alleged that he could get Ministers and bureaucrats sacked if they ever dared challenge his authority.
This Italian businessman, representing Snamprogetti, eventually became one of the causes of the beginning of the sudden downfall of the Rajiv Gandhi government. He is rumoured to have won as many as 60 projects worth Rs 300 billion across Asian countries for Snamprogetti. It was also alleged in a case that he was the main conduit for the payment of bribes to secure the contract for the sale of Bofors field guns to India. With the twists and turns, Quattrocchi is either vindicated or damned to nobody’s real satisfaction.

The Roulette... hit some, miss some
WITHIN this universe of come-and-go fixers is an enduring class of facilitators – like a permanent civil service available across the board. They manoeuvre in all political seasons though they may not have any particular constituency or any particular political party leader as their target. They are the likes of KC Tyagi, Sompal Singh, Virendra Dixit, Santosh Bharatiya and DP Tripathi. They surfaced suddenly during the Janata Party days. All became MPs at one time or another. Of them, Sompal was lucky to hit the jackpot and was inducted as a Minister in the Vajpayee government, besides being made a member of the Planning Commission. These facilitators have also been close to Mulayam Singh Yadav, VP Singh, LK Advani and Sharad Pawar. All of them can be seen flocking to the Constitution Club to attend some meeting or another.


Shivers would run down the spines of Ministers when Quattrocchi was on the line. It was rumoured he wielded such influence that he could get Ministers and bureaucrats sacked if they ever dared challenge his authority.

When Atal Behari Vajpayee, the cleanest of all the Mr Cleans, became PM, the people heaved a sigh of relief. At last, a PMO sans fixers. They could not have been more wrong. A new tribe, just as powerful, emerged: Pramod Mahajan, Ranjan Bhattacharya, Dinanath Misra, and Balbir Punj were already on the podium to welcome the palm greasers. Mahajan, Misra and Punj all reportedly operated through Bhattacharya or Brajesh Mishra.
Misra and Punj were even able to acquire Rajya Sabha seats. The clout they enjoyed with the PMO and Advani from 1996 to 2004 was without parallel. A veteran like Dattopant Thengadi, a renowned labour leader and an RSS protégé, was compelled to complain to Vajpayee about the growing clout and baneful influence of these facilitators.
Another curious character, Sudheendra Kulkarni, came out of the blue and quickly took root in the Vajpayee and Advani camps. Kulkarni’s rise was nothing short of meteoric. It was unusual for a BTech graduate from IIT Bombay in 1980 to become a journalist. Even more unusual was his association with two publications owned by Russy Karanjia – the Daily and Blitz – that were radically chic in outlook. In the early 1990s, Advani visited Mumbai. At a press conference, he said he had no problems with intellectual disagreement, it was only misrepresentation of his views by the media that upset him. “I have, for instance, read Sudheendraji’s article today. It is not favourable to us, but I liked what he wrote. It was provocative,” Advani said. For Kulkarni, his journalistic odyssey had just commenced. He moved on, joining the Reliance-owned Observer of Business and Politics as an executive. He also worked with the Hindujas before being picked up by the powers-that-be in Delhi.


The diminutive pudgy-faced MP, Rajiv Shukla, known better for his sycophancy before Congress operatives, and being an informant for ML Fotedar, than for any story he ever wrote, is back from the wilderness as a player in the Rahul Gandhi camp.

HE was made Director (Communications and Research) in the PMO. Because Vajpayee was strict about not allowing bureaucrats to attend party meetings, Kulkarni found himself uniquely placed to represent the party’s views in the PMO and take the PMO’s views to the party. When a fixer becomes a political guide, only disaster can follow. His lack of managerial capabilities was prominently on display during the elections in which the BJP suffered ignominy. His steadfast loyalty to the BJP’s Lohu Purush – his mentor, Advani – turned quickly to disenchantment after the electoral debacle. Eventually, his career came full circle to square one. He is currently with Reliance Industries.
Another star-spotter, in the mould of the Malhotras, is Prem Chand Gupta, a former Minister for Corporate Governance at the Centre, the conscience-keeper and, reportedly, the purse-keeper of Lalu Prasad Yadav. This well-known figure among the colourful ranks of facilitators reached his fixing heights by brokering a de-merger settlement between the feuding Ambani brothers. A small-time watch manufacturer at Singapore, his eagle eye spotted Lalu, the rising star on the political horizon, and he lost little time in establishing himself in the good books of the Bihari politician. Though Gupta belongs to Jind district in Haryana, he is a Rajya Sabha member, thanks to his boss, from Bihar for the last three terms. Even if better fortune may have shunned Lalu for the moment, Gupta’s loyalty to him remains impervious.
An interesting story doing the rounds in RSS circles concerns the amazing rise of Nishikant Dubey, a confidant of Rajnath Singh, ex-chief of the BJP, and of RSS acolyte Gurumurthy. Dubey was elected to the Lok Sabha from Godda constituency of Jharkhand on a BJP ticket. The man who arrived in Delhi wearing tattered slippers and lived in a barsati in South Avenue Apartments, climbed the ladder quickly to become a successful facilitator. He took little time in gaining the confidence and backing of one of India’s biggest business houses. His declared worth is to the tune of Rs 11 crore. He is reportedly not only a part-time Director in ESSAR but also wields enormous power in Jharkhand to protect the interest of his mentors.
Under Nehru, none dared even breathe the tainted terms “dealmakers”, “facilitators” and “fixers”. The leadership was simple, honest and hardworking. Bureaucrats were a conscientious species. Nehru trusted his Chief Ministers and always remained in direct touch with them.
Most facilitators nurture no real commitment to any individual, party, ideology or even to the interests of the nation. Money is their be-all and end-all. They are survivors, come what may. Former Cabinet Secretary BG Deshmukh once told gfiles that Delhi was a town of “200 influential people”, visibly pained while recounting the menacing influence of these facilitators on the bureaucracy of India.
Amar Singh once told a woman buddy from Bollywood: “When a leader is at the peak of power, exploit him to the hilt.” More of his ilk will wax and wane, but the genes and character of the facilitator seem destined to live on in time, in one shape or another.
PS: One such mutation is erstwhile wheeler-dealer and former Ravivar journalist, the diminutive pudgy-faced MP, Rajiv Shukla, known better for his sycophancy before Congress operatives, and being an informant for ML Fotedar, and Gen Next leaders like the late Madhavrao Scindia, than for any story he ever wrote. An outsider for a while, he is back from the wilderness, not only as BCCI Vice--President despite the fact that he does not know a googly from a chinaman but, more important, as a player in the Rahul Gandhi camp.