By Subrat Ratho
Public judgment in India often rests on surface impressions – how a leader speaks, how comfortably he occupies elite spaces, how fluently he performs before cameras. Those who do not fit that mould are frequently assessed by stereotypes rather than by experience. I encountered Ajit Pawar not in televised debates or public rallies, but in the routine, unspectacular settings of administration. The difference between perception and practice is worth recording.
The passing of Shri Ajit Pawar has prompted predictable reactions—praise even from some unlikely quarters and quick verdicts from commentators who prefer clarity to complexity. In public life, reputations rarely survive nuance.
What follows is neither an obituary nor a defence. It is a professional recollection – an account of what I saw while working with him, and a reflection on how we judge political leadership in India.
Across India’s English-speaking upper middle class, there exists an unspoken template of acceptability for political leaders. We admire those who appear urbane, fluent in English (or at least polished in Hindi), comfortable in television studios, globally legible in manner and tone. They fit our aesthetic of governance.
State-level leaders who operate primarily in their own vernacular rarely fit that template. Outside their states, they are often reduced to caricature. A rustic turn of phrase becomes buffoonery; bluntness becomes crudity; mass appeal is dismissed as populism. Their political success is viewed with faint suspicion – as though power acquired without elite polish must carry hidden stains.
Over decades, many state leaders across parties have experienced this dynamic. Some became national metaphors, admired and mocked in equal measure. Others commanded deep authority within their states but remained faint outlines in the English-language imagination. Political legitimacy at the state level operates on terms very different from those recognised in drawing rooms or television studios.
I worked closely with Shri Ajit Pawar – ‘Dada’ – when he was Energy Minister in the Prithviraj Chavan government, and I was serving as Principal Secretary of the Energy Department and Managing Director of Mahagenco.
Years in the IAS had already taught me one discipline: political leaders must be compared with other political leaders – MPs, MLAs and Ministers – not with abstract standards drawn from textbooks or seminar rooms. Politics is not a tutorial in ethics. It is a contest shaped by power, pressures and competing compulsions. Judgement must be grounded in that reality.
I approached the prospect of working with Ajit Dada with some apprehension. People had described him as stubborn, abrasive, and unpredictable. But I had no personal stake in clinging to any post at the pleasure of a minister. That freedom makes one calm even while it sharpens perception.
What I encountered was quite different from the caricature.
Dada was invariably punctual. Meetings began on time and ended with decisions. He was focused, impatient with digression, and quick to grasp essentials. He had an instinctive feel for what was practically feasible. Lengthy presentations that diagnosed problems without proposing solutions irritated him.
He could be brusque – blunt to the point of discomfort. His voice was loud, his manner direct. But I never saw theatrical anger, nor humiliation as a management tool. Occasionally, a dry, almost puckish humour surfaced in meetings.
He was not a clever orator. But he was always clear and to the point in his communications. Development was his ideology. Common sense is his compass. Speed and efficiency are his creed.
Administration seemed to come naturally to him.
Most significantly, he never pressured me to make a decision I considered improper. Even in routine matters – such as the transfer of an engineer – if I explained that it would be wrong, he accepted my position. I do not doubt that pressures reached him from political colleagues and other quarters. But he did not transmit them to me.
When politicians from any party or businesspeople approached him with requests, he would usually call early-morning meetings with the concerned officials. These meetings were brisk – often no more than ten minutes. In my experience, he consistently agreed with either my proposed solution or my reasoning for rejecting an unreasonable demand. That consistency built trust.
I witnessed the evolution of mutual respect between him and Shri Devendra Fadnavis, then an opposition leader known for his studious preparation and articulate speeches. Legislative combat did not preclude administrative cooperation. After sharp exchanges in the Assembly, genuine issues would still be addressed promptly in Ajit Dada’s chamber. That separation of politics from governance was rarer than it appears.
There was also a difficult phase when, as MD of Mahagenco, I discovered and decided to eliminate the malpractices perpetrated over the years by a deeply entrenched coal-washery network. The financial stakes were high; the interests formidable, the resistance vicious. I had to engage in battles on many unanticipated fronts (more about that in my memoirs). The pressure on the Minister must have been considerable. Many meetings were held. Ajit Dada did not publicly champion my cause. But he did not obstruct my actions either. Under the circumstances, restraint itself was a form of support.
Later, when I sought voluntary retirement from the IAS, sections of the media in Maharashtra speculated that it stemmed from clashes with the Minister. The rumours became persistent enough for both Ajit Dada and the senior ‘Pawar Saheb’ to call me separately and seek clarification a few days after I had left. I assured both of them that the rumours were baseless. Some amount of fatigue and an unexpected private-sector opportunity influenced my decision; conflict with the Minister did not.
Let us not be naive about the ecosystem within which ministers operate. Elections require money. Parties require resources. Contractors can cartelise; business interests often try to align with departments; pressures circulate constantly. Even transfers and postings of Government employees become instruments of patronage. The moral theatre of public discourse rarely acknowledges these structural realities.
Within such a system, some ministers will stop at nothing. In my experience, Ajit Dada was not one of them. He never crossed the line of decency or propriety in my experience.
I cannot speak about every department Ajit Dada handled or every controversy associated with his career. But during his tenure as Energy Minister, several major power projects were fast-tracked without manipulation of bid processes or conniving with contractual lapses. Red tape was reduced; decisions were taken without fear or favour.
This does not seek to canonise the man he was. Nor does it erase the complexities of his public life. Politics resists simplification.
But the easy caricature – the gruff, transactional strongman – misses something essential. What I encountered was a leader who was direct, decisive and, in his own way, institutionally respectful.
State politics in India is not a subsidiary theatre; it is the foundation of the republic. Many of its consequential figures will never resemble the drawing-room ideal of how leadership should look or sound. That discomfort may say as much about us as about them.
Ajit Dada was, unmistakably, himself.
With him, what you saw was largely what you got.
Time will judge his politics. Those of us who worked with him can only place on record what we witnessed.
(Author Subrat Ratho is a former bureaucrat. An Indian Administrative Service officer (1986 batch, Maharashtra cadre), Mr Ratho held key positions at both the Centre and State, shaping policy and administration across diverse sections.)
