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Obituary:
P.R. Kumaramangalam
Everybody's
Nephew
Union
power minister P. Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, who died of blood cancer
last week, was
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PR
Kumaramangalam
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undoubtedly
one of the most talented politicians of his generation. Ranga, as he was
affectionately called, had a compelling presence on the television screen,
a good head for policy issues and a clubby, sociable persona. His best
calling card, however, was his networking across the political spectrum
due to his lineage. His father S. Mohan Kumaramangalam, who died in an
air crash in 1973, had begun as a part of the communist party "barristocracy"
of the 1940s but later became Indira Gandhi's minister and her philosopher
and guide for the socialist programmes she undertook in the '70s. Ranga's
grandfather P. Subbarayan was a member of the Nehru cabinet. His uncle
General P. Kumaramangalam was the chief of army staff and one of the last
Sandhurst-trained officers of the Indian Army. His mother, Kalyani, is
the niece of Ajoy Mukherjee, the first non-Congress chief minister of
West Bengal.
Ranga's
parents' wide circle of friends brought him a rich harvest of highly placed
"uncles": Jyoti Basu, Indrajit Gupta, I.K. Gujral, P.V. Narasimha
Rao and Arjun Singh. In the post-1991 fractured polity, when yesterday's
enemy became today's saviour of minority governments, Ranga sailed smoothly
through the political "uncledom". In the process, he moved far
away from the socialism that his father cherished, annulling recently,
as the BJP's minister in charge of coal, vital clauses that his father
had written three decades back to nationalise coal mines.
Earlier,
in 1991, as law minister in the Rao cabinet, Ranga was emotionally stressed
when he was given the task of amending the MRTP Act, also authored by
his father. Finance minister Manmohan Singh, who understood his agony,
called him aside and asked him to do "what your father would have
liked to do in the changed circumstances". Ranga promptly signed
on the amendment that did away with state control on the growth of private
business. Switching from tricolour to saffron, the scion of one of the
country's leading political families trusted his head more than his heart
until a fatal disease overtook him.
-Sumit
Mitra
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The
stock markets are humming, and it's feel-good time once again, writes
INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 
