Why giving any job to Subramanian Swamy is a headache for Modi
What is wrong to others is right to him. Being verbally pugnacious is integral to his personality. Promotion of Brand Swamy is essential for his survival and Twitter is an important platform for his often ludicrous comments and observations.
He must have been the 39th Subramanian Swamy to register on the micro-blogging site or may have received a cosmic signal that @Swamy39 was a good handle to elevate his fame to another level. I am yet to unravel why he chose the alphanumeric as digital signature on Twitter.
With Swamy there has never been anything off-the-record. Some weeks ago, he did not bat an eyelid when he declared in a TV show that he was offered the finance minister's job before the parliamentary polls. Before the anchor and a dozen other scribes on the show could recover from the news, he reeled out another "exclusive" - Amit Shah personally carried Prime Minister Narendra Modi's offer to head the BRICS bank. Being the head of the new financial institution was too trivial a position for him though he will lap up a ministerial position, he stated. He exuded the conceited arrogance of a man who had turned down a job - and that too made on behalf of the most powerful man in India!
For a large part of the week, Swamy has been where he likes best - at the centre of controversy. "Swamy As JNU V-C" got everyone's goat without probably the offer ever having being made. In any case, however much certain sections in the present regime may wish, certain procedures have to be followed while making appointments. Beyond the entertainment, almost everyone who is an admirer of Modi, Swamy and the present regime thought the idea was excellent. One thought that after hearing the news, Sitaram Yechury's head would explode. Another claimed that the mythical Arjun was required to "break chakravyuha of hard Left".
Having been a one-time student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and briefly connected with student politics, I can say with certain fortitude that Swamy as JNU V-C would be an excellent point to rally the Left. In fact, unless they were politically myopic, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists in JNU, flush with a victory in JNUSU after a long gap, would have been despondent. With one appointment, the government would have stymied any chance the organisation has of further growth. The idea of Swamy for the position is so abhorrent - only for his intellectual intolerance and not his ideological tilt let me clarify - that various leftist forces, often so badly divided, would have come together.
This is precisely the reason why Swamy has remained the quintessential outsider. For the sustenance of Brand Swamy, he must necessarily be an outsider when the necessity is to be a Durbari and vice versa. It would be dangerous for Modi or any other regime to appoint him to any official position because no one can be certain when he will cross over. Tales abound about him, each crazy one being overtaken by a crazier one. "No one", a senior politician said during a break on a TV show, "can be certain that Swamy does not have a file on her or him." He is the omnipresent Intelligence Bureau with a network that is subject of envy.
The number of issues he simultaneously handles - and does a good job with them by getting on nerves of his targets - is undoubtedly impressive. Listening to him, I often try to imagine how a cosy one-on-one between him and Modi would unfold. My imagination fails me.
Because Swamy does not bat an eyelid while making the most preposterous of suggestions (for instance, his recent public letter to Modi says that income tax should be abolished), it would be a huge risk for Modi to remotely consider Swamy for any position. At different points of time, Swamy has declared, that the Ram temple will be built by 2016 and that unless his magic formula is accepted by Modi, Indian economy will plummet anytime between November this year and February 2016. Clearly, being alarmist is his strategy to remain in spotlight. And if someone rubs him the wrong way, PTs or Patriotic Tweeple are always there to inundate the person with internet hate.
Swamy was always an enigma and the farther Modi stays away, the safer will he remain!