George Fernandes was a politician and renowned trade union leader for decades. His demise draws to a close an era of hard-core socialists and the ‘isms’ that they pursued with some vigour. Whether the socialists have managed to achieve social well-being is a debatable point but no one could doubt their sincerity of purpose, which is clearly lacking in present-day politics. Fernandes as defence minister ended up with some stigma related to bribe-taking in a hidden-camera expose in 2001, and his final years were spent battling serious health problems. Overall, he was a good soul, a crusader for the working class, and left behind a legacy that the future generation can ignore at its peril.
A multi-faceted politician, Fernandes mostly led a simple life. He struggled in the streets of Mumbai, working as a labourer, attending evening classes, and progressing into a firebrand labour union leader. The Emergency saw him getting involved in the Baroda dynamite case. In his later years he became Union Minister for repeated terms. As Railway minister, he launched the Konkan Railway project, something unimaginable along the West Coast because of the ghats and the treacherous terrain there. He made a mark in every ministry he led, which also included Communications, Industry and Defence. He headed the Defence Ministry when the Kargil war was fought.
Fernandes had his ear to the ground and often came up with novel ideas and out-of-the-box solutions. Yet, ideologically, he found himself on the wrong side of of progress politics where Leftists as a whole too find themselves at the political margins. Fernandes himself took up wrong causes on occasions, driven as he was by the ideology he upheld. One such was the campaign he led against the introduction of colour TVs in 1982. Time proved him wrong. Fernandes had opposed it by saying it helped the rich with no benefit to the poor.
A visionary, he had long ago identified China as India’s main enemy, about which there’s unanimity now. The Pokhran nuclear test took place under his watch as defence minister in 1998. An alleged coffin purchase scam during the Kargil war became news for a while and cast a shadow on him but it fizzled out sooner than most scams we hear of today. George Fernandes had his share of weaknesses but his strengths as a politician surpassed the flaws. He did not believe in right wing fascism as embodied in the Shiv Sena and warned the likes of Bal Thackeray about the diminishing returns of such an ideology. George Fernandes is a class apart.