Manohar Parrikar, the man with impeccable integrity

BHUBANESHWAR: Bakul Desai, a Hyderabad-based businessman, has a story on Manohar Parrikar's sense of fairness. In the late 1970s, as students at IIT Powai, they were forced to travel ticketless as they could not wake up the man behind the counter at 4 am. At Dadar, a ticket examiner fined Parrikar Rs 10 plus an additional 40 paise for the fare. A furious Parrikar travelled ticketless for the next semester, as he thought it was unfair. "One day he found his free trips had cost the government Rs 11.20 paise. So he bought stamps from a post office and tore them up. Now, the Government of India and I are square,' he said."

Parrikar's friend believes his integrity is the reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked him. What he will also bring to the job is a geeky passion for finance and engineering and a deep sense of nationalism. An admitted workaholic, Parrikar insists on leading a simple life.

The 58-year-old widower, who recently turned grandfather, lives with the elder of his two sons in a two-bedroom apartment that he is still paying installments for. Parrikar, whose father owned a grocery shop, is a metallurgist by training and runs a smallscale hydraulic engineering unit employing about 15 people.

There are many accounts of his spartan style — security personnel seeing him arriving at the airport in a rickshaw, carrying his own luggage, wearing rumpled bush shirts and chappals in North Block... None of this is for effect.

Talks that a national role, possibly as finance minister, awaited him was also the doing the rounds in May. “Parrikar has a khujli for numbers and finance. He understands the difference between 1% and 1.07%,” said businessman Nandan Kudchadkar.

In 2012, after leading the BJP back to power, as promised, he reduced value added tax on petrol from 22% to 0.1%, making it cheapest in the country at Rs 55 a litre. Simultaneously, he also reduced VAT on aviation fuel from 22% to 12%, putting Dabolim airport on every airline’s refuelling stop. That meant more flights to Goa, bringing with them planeloads of tourists and more than making up for the loss in revenue.

One of his most vocal critics is former Congress and now independent Goa MLA Vijay Sardesai.

“It is… a fact that Parrikar had succeeded in creating an inclusive model for BJP in Goa, given tickets and ministerial positions to Christians,” he said.

But his departure for Delhi will undermine the party in Goa, he said.

“The BJP in Goa, minus Parrikar, will be totally exposed. That of all of 288 MPs in the country, the BJP in the Centre must take the Goa chief minister, also exposes the bankruptcy of leadership and talent in the party at the central level,” Sardesai said.

Despite his long association with the RSS from his schooldays, when he attended Durganand Nadkarni’s shakhas, Parrikar has managed to create for himself a reputation as a somewhat moderate leader. “For him, the RSS instilled discipline and an idea of patriotism, where India came before even Indians, and where one’s being a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Hindu must not come in the way,” said Desai, whose known Parrikar for nearly four decades.