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Textbooks to textiles: Smriti to man-mark Rahul in new role?

Smriti irani HRD to textile
Author
Bengaluru, First Published Jul 10, 2016, 5:49 AM IST

The cabinet reshuffle of last week carried two dominant themes. One of ministerial performance being under close scrutiny. Two, the BJP is pulling out all stops in the run up to Uttar Pradesh elections in 2017.

 

Smriti Irani, the most high-profile casualty of the rearrangement of cabinet chairs, is in many ways the totem of these twin objectives.

 

As human resources minister, Irani was a controversy magnet. The minister responsible for education souping up her academic credentials is an embarrassment any government could do without. Like the star footballer a team, she seemed to attract more fouls than most other members of the team. Not just the opposition, the media too derived great pleasure in tripping her up . The Kolkata daily, The Telegraph, the new, new favourite of anti-Modistas for its provocative page one,  banner headline baiting of the government employed class snobbery and sexism in equal measure against Irani with headlines such as 'Aunty National' and 'Spinderella' when describing her.

 

 

One popular online and newspaper columnist, often seen and heard decrying everyday gender bias against women, upon learning that Irani may have been filmed on CCTV inside at the ethnic wear chain Fabindia's trial room, took to mocking the minister on her physical appearance.

 

 

When the reshuffle announcement, she lost no time in firing a fresh round of sarcasm at Irani.

 

 

However, freed up from  textile minister, the cardsharps Modi and Amit Shah--to fall back on the footballing analogy-- will be hoping to use Irani's terrier traits to man mark Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi out of the game in UP 2017.

 

Irani ran Rahul Gandhi pretty close at Amethi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2012 UP campaign,  when Congress was widely tipped to make spectacular gains, Rahul expended considerable political capital in wooing UP's weavers.  To bolster Rahul's political prospects, the  union government lavished a Rs 6,000 crore bunkar or weavers package that included debt write-offs and collateral free loans.  The handloom sector employs some three million weavers, and if you throw in allied workers, the number goes up to about four million.

 

UP has four handloom clusters (Bijnore, Varanasi, Mubarakpur and Barabanki)--more than any other state.  PM's own constituency Varanasi and adjoining regions in Eastern UP are major textile clusters. Also a sizable number of textile workers in UP are Muslim.

 

The Modi government has last month announced a Rs 6,000 crore package to revive the ailing textile sector. Expect more UP specific sops from the new minister, and barbs directed at Rahul Gandhi on the 'failure' of the bunkar packages he promised in 2012.  

 

Demotion or not, Irani's new portfolio certainly suggests the BJP management after some Total Football-type experiment, has decided to play her in a role that suits her best.

 

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