The whole country had expected Pranab Mukherjee to become Prime Minister first in 1984 and the second time in 2009. That never happened.
Pranab was a quite apolitical strategist. His elephantine memory, knowledge of Constitutional provisions and parliamentary procedures had endeared him even to political foes. He knew like the back of his hand all he played around with, from finance to foreign policy through political powerplay. He was demonstrably humane and humble, at least outwardly. But his tragic flaw was his monumental ‘short temper'. He was also stubborn about his strong viewpoints perhaps because he knew well that most members of his political clan were pinheads.
Pranab had the best of times during Indira Gandhi's second innings between 1980 and 1984. Prime Minister Mrs Gandhi began to value his advice and his acute intelligence around this period. Even after the grand image Indira built for self after the Bangladesh war, she could not wriggle out of the ‘bureaucracy-dependence' situation for a variety of unavoidable reasons. PN Haksar, the bureaucrat called all critical shots then. Pranab solved this problem by creating a pool of highly-skilled political aides for Indira Gandhi. Therefore, Madam Gandhi made it obvious that he was the number two in the cabinet.
When Indira Gandhi was shot on October 31, 1984, coincidentally Mukherjee and Rajiv Gandhi were both in Calcutta. A special flight was organised to take them back to Delhi. While he sat alone, extremely worried about his mentor, Rajiv was sat away with his team. In the cockpit, the captain informed Rajiv that Madam Gandhi was no more. As Rajiv announced that in the cabin, Pranab began sobbing loudly. Rajiv remained composed, but Pranab’s sobbing got louder to attract every passenger’s attention, irking Rajiv because he imagined Pranab was acting to prove excessive closeness to late Madam Gandhi. Pranab suddenly stopped sobbing and got active as the de facto number one. He entered the cockpit and sent a message through the pilot's radio that the three Service chiefs were to come to the airport to meet him along with the Cabinet Secretary. The Prime Minister had been assassinated. So, it was his job to hold the fort till the succession was sorted out. This supposedly pragmatic action cost him his political future. Rajiv and his aides noticed that the officials had all turned up at the airport to take orders from Pranab and began to wonder if he was getting ready to take over.
Pranab could never get close to Rajiv as the latter’s gang led by Arun Nehru kept him poisoned about the former. Not surprisingly, he was not included in the small emergency Cabinet Rajiv formed right after he was sworn in. Even after Rajiv's landslide victory that winter, Pranab was clearly told that his services were not required at all in Delhi. He was sent to Bengal with some meaningless political post, from which too he was sacked soon. Thus, Pranab was ousted from the Congress fold for good. Overconfident and foolishly ambitious Pranab tried out with a party of his own but failed to even get noticed by the people.
Four years later when Rajiv had recognised who was friend and who foe, and known the self-serving crooks in the gang he nurtured, he remembered Pranab, by now a lost, disillusioned character. Pranab became the trusted number two yet again. If Rajeev had lived, Pranab would have become Finance Minister. But fate changed and Narasimha Rao brought Manmohan Singh as boss of finance merrily ignoring Pranab despite his great skills and political acumen. Manmohan Singh used to report to him as boss during the former’s Reserve Bank stint. Rao made Pranab Foreign Minister, but he never became a political star ever again. Manmohan proved to be far better with his liberalisation strategies and more. As Prime Minister, Manmohan gave Pranab a berth in the Cabinet but remained his boss forever.
Pranab's relationship with Manmohan soured when the latter argued that it was worth letting the Government collapse if the Indo-US nuclear deal was not passed. The problematic Left opposed the deal and threatened to withdraw support if it went through. Pranab implicitly sided with the Left because the issue would not hardly matter for the electorate. The Congress had never gone to the polls by dangling any nuclear deal. It was then decided by the party honchos that Pranab would be Prime Minister as the support of the Left, close to Pranab, was critical for a Congress victory. Manmohan would be put in the President’s post. But the Congress did substantially better in 2009 than in 2004 and no longer needed the Left. So, they recognised the magic of Manmohan and made him PM. Pranab lost the last opportunity to become President in 2009. The Prime Ministerial dream was shattered for all times.
There was a lot of murmur then about Pranab having been pocketed by the rising tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani as the ‘license raj' under the former made armtwisting and satisfying corporate favourites just too easy. The Rajiv Gandhi gang had convinced the freshly-inducted, enthusiastic PM Rajiv Gandhi that unethical business guys needed to be fixed. Since Ambani was in good terms with Pranabda, the new, clean-image guy had no respect for Pranab who was also projected as an Indira sycophant who had misguided Indira Gandhi constantly for personal fame and gain.
It is, of course, true that Pranab had been enormously lucky. From a remote kerosene-lamp village home in Birbhum district in West Bengal, he made it to the Presidential palace without having to struggle much. He had tried all middleclass professions -- clerk in the Post and Telegraph department, journalist with the Bengali publication ‘Desher Dak', and teacher at an ordinary college.
Pranab happened to impress Indira Gandhi by strategically managing V Krishna Menon’s Midnapore Lok Sabha by-election campaign in 1969. Indira found him useful and gave him a Rajya Sabha seat, which he enjoyed for five terms until 2004 when eventually he had to fight a Lok Sabha seat from Jangipura in Bengal successfully which he retained in 2009.
In a 48-year grand political innings, Dada had to fight only twice. That’s being enviably lucky, but never being able to become PM due to strangest circumstances cropping up at the eleventh hour brands him unlucky too.