On Day 3 of taking over, new petroleum minister Murli Deora found himself with his head in the lion's jaws: ONGC Videsh's proposal to pick up stake in the two Nigerian exploration blocks.
Assuming the new petroleum minister would be as bullish as his predecessor in acquiring oil assets abroad, OVL pressed home a proposal to spend $470 million on oil blocks in Nigeria that Korea had been unable to bag. Days old in the ministry, Deora was expected to carry the proposal through in Cabinet.
He found the Cabinet asking him searching question, especially finance minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
Where Mani Shankar Aiyar might have carried the proposal through sheer bombast, Deora opted to exit smoothly and returned to his room in the ministry vowing to study foreign acquisitions by oil majors more carefully in the future.
The petroleum ministry's ambitions of seeing India conquer the world through oil diplomacy have seen a setback since Deora has taken over.
Murli Deora is measured in the way that only a major fundraiser of the Congress party can be. A man who has been Bombay Regional Congress Committee president for 18 years, succeeded legendary political personality and social figure Rajni Patel in the job and has seen towering personalities blossom and wither away, Deora was one of the most underleveraged members of the Congress party until he was appointed minister.
Underleveraged because only Deora could have managed to stay friends with both Dhirubhai Ambani and Ramnath Goenka at the height of their feud.
He told journalist Pritish Nandy in an interview how he did it and what is, in fact, the philosophy of his life: "I settled that feud at my house. Both very close friends of mine. Ramnath Goenka used to tell me, I admire you that you did not leave Dhirubhai when V P Singh was going after his blood. I never leave, I always stand by my friends, wherever they are, rich or poor doesn't matter. When Ramnath Goenka was fighting a war with Rajiv Gandhi, he used to come to my house and play bridge every evening. You must stand by people, that's what humanity is all about."
But while Mani Shankar Aiyar took to becoming a minister as a duck to water, the soft-spoken and reticent Deora seems to have had trouble adjusting to the limelight.
Recently, the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha watched first politely and then impatiently as Deora struggled to assemble facts to answer a simple question.
Manohar Joshi, who asked the question, repeated it in Hindi, and when he didn't get an answer, offered helpfully to ask it in Marathi - or Gujarati, if the minister had trouble comprehending that language.
The fact is that there are many around who might be smarter, sharper or savvier than Deora. But few will be able to match his integrity.
There are some who would argue this has never really been tested because Deora has never been minister. A test is coming up. Reliance Industries and NTPC are slugging it out on the pricing of gas.
Both Murli Deora and power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde have written letters to each other to get RIL and NTPC to comply with their respective commitments. NTPC is a public sector unit in battle with a private sector behemoth. Whom will Shinde and Deora speak for? It remains to be seen.
A Congressman for more than three decades, Deora is old school. He is intensely religious but completely secular. And he understands the mind and the motivations of Congressmen through and through.
That's why he was so unmoved through the storm of the hike in petrol prices. It takes more than thundering Congress spokesmen to cow down Murli Deora.
With Deora in the petroleum ministry, maturity is expected to return to it.
And the thing is, you will see that Deora will make only friends at the end of it. No enemies.
