Ashwini Vaishnaw: The man who always strikes gold

Before Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned as the prime minister in 2004, a deputy secretary in his office is rumoured to have told him that he didn’t want to work under a Congress prime minister. This bureaucrat would stay on as Vajpayee’s private secretary until 2006. And later go on to be the blue-eyed boy at “new” India’s highest seat of power.

Ashwini Vaishnaw’s dramatic political ascent, from bureaucrat and technocrat to politician, has few precedents in Indian politics (perhaps the closest parallel in recent times is that of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar). From being a promising IAS officer from the Odisha cadre in 1994, he had by 2021 – after stints in corporate India, a degree from the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an enterprise – made his way to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. 

And his entrepreneurial run was, by all accounts, a hit. If money is a parameter of success, a single company he invested Rs 1 lakh in had reaped him shares with a book value of over Rs 113 crore within years. In fact, the revenue of this company rose from Rs 45 lakh to over 323 crore within six years of inception. 

Vaishnaw’s political career formally began in 2019 with a surprising move by Odisha’s governing BJD and its rival BJP, who joined hands for the purpose of nominating him to the Rajya Sabha. By this time, Vaishnaw’s connections with Odisha ran deeper than just belonging to its IAS cadre. Links that are usually ignored by paeans to the paradox in Indian politics that Vaishnaw is perceived to be. 

He had, after all, largely been away from Odisha between 2003 and 2015, until a small firm brought him back. What had followed was a journey connected to the state’s mining baron, and one that would ostensibly fuel his political rise.

Mining his connections

Originally from Rajasthan and belonging to a family that has deep ties with the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (once the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Vaishnaw’s political career formally began in 2019. In a surprising move, Odisha’s governing party Biju Janata Dal and its rival BJP came together to nominate Vaishnaw for the Rajya Sabha. Vaishnaw had initially been named as the BJD nominee, but soon after this announcement, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said there had been some “confusion”.