THE 11th Lok Sabha had reached a crescendo. Octogenarian table-thumpers lumbered to their feet, like creatures from the Deep waving tentacle-like arms; first-time legislators bounced up and down howling in unison at irrelevant points of contention; back-benchers leered at a feminine shair; the just-a-fortnight government shrieked its defiance. Millions of Indians sat transfixed, gazing at the horrifying tele-images of democracy unbound.
Then suddenly the Speaker smiled. Not just smiled, he grinned; in fact, he even chuckled. He rose lightly to his feet. "Come on, yaar," he expostulated, the voice as musical as the guitars of Shillong. "Please, please, come on, come on." The House giggled. "Can't you see the chair is on its legs?" he enquired of a riotous member from across the Vindhyas. "Why are you worried?" he soothed a woman MP from the East. "Don't worry." Over a sea of bitter dispute, the Speaker's face floated like the Cheshire Cat's. Good humour poured down from the high chair onto the quarrelling benches. For a few moments hostilities were suspended as the guardian of the House unleashed a witticism. Purno Agitok Sangma had rescued the parliamentary spirit with a few good jokes.
The informality of the Speaker is almost a shock to a public accustomed to the slick-haired and dour Shivraj Patil, remote and learned Rabi Ray or the lacklustre Balram Jakhar. Where the haughty gravi-tas of state once sat, now a laughing gnome presides. But does his cheery presence take away from the dignity of the chair? "The Speaker," says an MP, "should not bend over backwards trying to be funny. He should be a little remote, above the fray, he should not compromise on the sanctity of the chair."
"But I am a natural man, and I am what I am," says the 49-year-old Sangma. "Tomorrow I may be nothing. And to my wife I am just her husband, to my children I am just their father. Nothing else."
Officials at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, where he was minister for a brief while, remember him as being a combination of humour and firmness. "You have my fullest support in whatever you do," he once told them. "But if you cross me, remember I am a tribal." "He's always been convivial," says journalist Sanjoy Hazarika, who has known Sangma for over 20 years. "Friendliness gushes out of him, he's the kind of guy who works hard but might just occasionally knock off work and go fishing.
Deep in the ancient forests, tribal councils have existed for generations, dispensing justice, sorting out day-to-day problems, relatively free from the rigid divisions of the caste Hindu societies of central India. And the influence of the missionaries has led to a passion for education, attachment to liberal values and hard work being seen as the path to success. "Educated Garos have really tried to make the liberal project work," says Hazarika. "In this sense there are many like Sangma: Garos who are at home in three languages, have a common-sense approach. In fact, Sangma is a representative of the informal, civilised and democratic ways of the North-east"
Yet, one can't go from trudging across the hillsides of Chapahati village where he grew up, to riding in convoy down Rajpath by being too nice. Indeed, when he was Labour minister, entrusted with the task of reining in tough, fractious unions in the early push towards liberalisation, CITU leader M.K. Padhye says Sangma could speak as strongly as the union leaders did. "During our meetings we would shout at each other. We had a number of differences, such as on the Industrial Relations Bill, pension schemes and others, but after the meetings we would always speak in friendly terms. He was quite jovial." And dealing with 50,000 trade unions over nine years must have prepared him for the less-than-stately deliberations of Parliament. "When you've handled unions, you can handle anything," he says. "I have also been a teacher, I've taught at nursery and at high school; so I suppose I am used to some noise.
"He laughs a great deal. Yet he has seen poverty, years of struggle and a difficult ascent up the ranks of the Congress party from president of the Garo Hills Youth Congress to confidant of Narasimha Rao. Purno Agitok was named after the full moon which shone when he was born but there was little moonlight and few roses for the sixth child of a large family. "I have been poor, so I know exactly what it's like," he once said. Whether playing football with factory workers or allowing a visitor to pluck the flowers from his office garden, he appears impatient with the trappings of high office. He admires Lal Bahadur Shastri most of all "because he rose from the ranks". Sangma's parents had no money for his education but he worked so hard at his studies that a missionary was impressed enough to send the little boy through school and college.
Sangma has worked for the Congress tirelessly—even during the anti-Indira Gandhi wave after the Emergency—and has been a regular representative from Tura from where he has not lost once. And while North Block pondered on the theories of globalisation, Sangma was on the frontline with the trade unions, convincing them of reform. His reward was the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in an election year. Armed with an MA and a law degree from Guwahati University, Sangma brings a problem-solving approach to his tasks; a hands-on pragmatist in search of better living conditions through economic change, not a participant of endless seminars on doctrinal shifts in government.
And in times when it is fashionable not to believe in anything but the arithmetic formulae of political supremacy, he expresses devotion to the old chestnuts of the founding fathers: the Constitution, Indian democracy, fair play. "The fact that I have become Speaker certainly proves that our Constitution is functioning, that fundamental rights that give equal opportunities for all are in force. For a person of the North-east to come to this position certainly reveals the beauty of democracy in India." The words are spoken matter-of-factly, without artifice. They are the articles of faith of an 'outsider' in the Delhi durbar, the robust idealism of a self-made leader of his people.
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