Why Pratibha Patil has got a ticket to ride

On the day that we lay our greatest president yet to rest, it is fitting we toast the woman who wrote the manual on How To Be A President 101. (Its sequel, "Favours to Ask for While in Office" is currently being written by the honourable Pranab Mukherjee). Let's be fair. She was a brilliant private entrepreneur. Is it her fault that virtues of the corporate world do not always translate well in public service? As travel agency, the business was a success: 12 trips, 22 countries clocking 79 days accompanied by anywhere between two to ten family members at just Rs 205cr is a veritable coup. Except it may well lead to one when it is taxpayer money spent on it. Imelda Marcos was not all about the shoes. But India is a more patient people. After all, it was commuted by her immense compassion - to the 35 death row rapists, murderers, kidnappers of children. India is clearly in no danger of another birthday being declared Children's Day. If anything "Finish your homework now or Pratibha Patil will release another one" - is more likely in maternal lexicon. She was an immensely self-reliant president. She appraised herself, praised herself, and gave herself a three hundred per cent salary hike. The only available comparison is Karunanidhi's greatest memory of APJ Abdul Kalam being that he once praised his speech while in the audience for it. It is possible Kalam, finding no merit in the man to exalt, politely restricted himself to his diction, so let's not fault the man's taste in speeches. She was unfairly dubbed our very own Marie Antoinette, because she was one capable of great sacrifice. Who else has ever given up a palatial retirement home at Khadki in Pune for the war widows? And they blamed it on public outrage. The credit was all hers. Robert Vadra looks mere Robin Hood, and Rajendra Prasad, who donated his land to Vinoba Bhave, a right chump. That Kalam owned little but a tiny ancestral home shared with his brothers makes him look like a man who did not understand the point of a presidency at all. Throws his entire body of scientific work under a cloud of suspicion, that one. She was also an astute economist, her immense financial canny erecting chit funds, tsunami relief funds, and felicitation funds, that had they made her finance minister, would have floated the GDP of an entire alternate nation immune to recession. If they ever give the veto back to the RBI governor, they ought to name his gavel after her: The Patil Strike for all presidential pardons of integrity. Now all she's asked for is a car. It's not like she sought a rocket. Everyone cannot be like Kalam and build one with their own hands. The only vehicle he ever owned were the satellites he built. The nation now rides on them. How to be a President 101 is a manual not everyone can write.