Photo from rajkumar1220 on Flickr

“Every five years, it is the masses who determine who will form the government. And in between those five years the classes determine what that government will do.”

Mani Shankar Aiyar, who will be speaking against the motion ‘Democracy is India’s Achilles’ Heel’ this September, is one of the most vocal critics of his country’s social inequalities.
 
A Cambridge economics graduate, diplomat for Rajiv Gandhi and Congress politiician, Aiyar publicly stated in 2007 that he is now a “complete Marxist”. He argues that the economic policies that are driving the subcontinent’s industrial and financial expansion only help a small group of influential people; despite India’s rapid growth since the early 1990s, 28% of India’s 1.2bn people still live below the poverty line.

As Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports from 2006 to 2009, Aiyar was involved in the Commonwealth Games controversy. He raised issues about expenditure with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, before staggering costings were submitted including $2 toilet paper rolls being claimed at $80 and $11,830 altitude training simulators at $250,190.  

Aiyar is no stranger to controversy. As Petroleum Minister - the post he held before taking on the sports brief - he proposed an Iran-Pak-India pipeline project that, according to documents unearthed by Wikileaks, led to the US putting pressure on the Indian government to remove him from his post.

He also made headlines back in 2000 after an argument with Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh at a party broke into a brawl. Aiyar claims “he (Singh) talked about my leader’s mother in a derogatory manner.”   

Find out more about Mani Shankar Aiyar’s views on the future of Indian Democracy at our debate “Democracy is India’s Achilles’ heel”. It takes place on September 27 and also features William Dalrymple, Patrick French and Suhel Seth.