Nov 1, 1999

Naveen Patnaik, 52
Minister for Mines and Mineral, BJD Chief

HIS FATHER'S SON
In India, politics is often treated as an inheritance. Biju Patnaik, the legendary Orissa politician, never saw it that way. He named his Bhubaneswar residence "Navin Niwas" but ensured that his son stayed as far away from the state as possible. The artistic son of a rich and famous father, Naveen became a celebrity in his own right. He was on first name terms with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger.
All that changed in 1997 with the death of Biju. A distraught party pleaded, Naveen accepted and within a few months he was an MP. Within two years, he was a senior cabinet minister and billed as the future Orissa chief minister and Oriya of the millennium. Soft-spoken and fanatically polite, Naveen reeks of decency, the honourable schoolboy shanghaied into being his father's son. Intrigues with aesthetics, that's the story of Naveen's meteoric rise.

-Swapan Dasgupta

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