Oscar Fernandez, a close confidante of the Gandhi family was one of the longest-serving Members of Parliament.
Most politicians I came across were hard working but Oscar Fernandez was a class apart. I met him for the first time when he was appointed as Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment (Independent charge) in 2007. I was posted as Director General. Labour and Employment in the Ministry. Even though I had joined a few months before Oscar Fernandez’ took over as Minister, I never got to see his predecessor, Chandrashekar Rao who hardly showed his face in Delhi as he was busy with the Telengana agitation in Andhra Pradesh (Telengana was finally separated from Andhra a few years later).
Oscar Fernandez had not been a Minister before he took charge of the Labour and Employment Ministry. Yet, he displayed the maturity and sagacity of a seasoned Minister. I interacted with him on several occasions and each occasion, I found him extremely meticulous in his approach, always going into details. We were in the process of drafting a law on providing social security to workers in the unorganized sector. This required several rounds of discussions with him. He had a point of view on most of the issues that came up for discussion but had an open mind. There were several instances when he agreed to a view that was at variance with what he had initially mentioned. All this allowed free-flowing discussions wherein everyone benefitted.
Oscar Fernandez addressed several conferences during his tenure as Minister. I was present in some of them. He was eloquent and very rarely did he speak from written text. He did prepare well for these speeches and referred to some of the notes that he carried but he rarely read out a speech. This was true also when he responded to the debates in the Parliament. Here too, he never read out from prepared text though took assistance from the notes that we provided him from the officers’ gallery.
The most lasting image of Oscar Fernandez in my mind is his playing the mouth organ at a dinner hosted by the Indian Ambassador in Geneva. And, he played it well, swaying as he did.
I thought I would never meet Oscar Fernandez after he was shifted out of the Ministry. But I did. I met him at a conference where he was invited as the chief guest and I was there as the guest of honour. I had also shifted out of the Labour Ministry on promotion to Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat heading the Project Monitoring Group. Both of us had the habit of reaching such events on time. I loved his punctuality even as a minister. And, he hadn’t changed. The other guests were still pouring in so the organizers requested us to have a cup of tea till the programme commenced. We did so. However, I utilized the time to convey to him an extremely sensitive issue.
The United Progressive Alliance was already reeling because of various scams that had emerged and another one was in the making. I used this opportunity to broach the issue relating to the delays in clearance by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the associated rumours regarding ‘speed money’ that infamously came to be known by the name of a Cabinet Minister. He didn’t look very surprised, “Anil Ji, even I have heard of such rumours”. Having worked closely with Rajiv Gandhi when he was the Prime Minister, Oscar was known to be close to the Gandhi family even now. The conversation carried on as I suggested to him, “Don’t you think that ‘Madam’ (my reference was to Sonia Gandhi) should be informed about this as the government seemed to be getting a bad name”. He agreed with me as he nodded his head.
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I don’t know how it happened or whether what I had conveyed to Oscar Fernandes was even conveyed to ‘Madam’ but the concerned Cabinet Minister was shown the door within a week. My hunch is that Oscar Fernandez proved effective, yet again.
