New team rides on dreams

The UPA government’s two new minority faces are thinking big.

Saif-ud-Din Soz has asked bureaucrats at the water resources ministry for a list of complex problems that could be resolved with some political intervention. Soz comes from Jammu and Kashmir where dialogue is currently the buzzword in the political lexicon. He is the man who has been instrumental in bringing separatists to Delhi for talks with the Prime Minister. After taking charge on Monday, the minister declared he would use the same mantra at the ministry too to resolve inter-state water sharing disputes.

Abdul Rehman Antulay, the new  minority affairs minister, does not see the ministry as just a cell to cement the Congress vote-bank, as the BJP alleged, but a larger-than-life role for himself to bring all minorities – religious, linguistic or otherwise – into mainstream India.

“The PM has named it the ministry for minority welfare. In concept, I think that it is the ministry of national integration,” he said after a meeting with Cabinet secretary B.K. Chaturvedi where he was briefed on the first draft of the work his ministry would be allotted.

Antulay’s point was that he considered national integration incomplete for as long as there were people who did not feel they were part of the mainstream.

Six decades of public life, Antulay said, had given him a lot of experience that he could put to good use. But Antulay suggested that his strategy at improving the lot of the minorities would be quite similar to those used by Soz.

Soz made a similar point when he talked about water disputes. “By effective dialogue, every goal can be achieved,” he announced, promising to keep egos and politics out of the decision-making process.