Ram Vilas Paswan: 'Political weather scientist' who served in governments of various ideological moorings

File image: Late union minister Ram Vilas Paswan

Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who died at 74 on October 8 days after a heart surgery, was considered as the most reliable weathervane of Indian politics--- a man who knew which way the wind blew, and how to go along with it.

Born in 1946 in a small village near Khagaria in eastern Bihar to a Dalit family, Paswan was a hardworking, bright and ambitious student. Having completed a master's degree and a law degree from Patna University, Paswan had also cleared the civil services examination in Bihar. While he was qualified to become a superintendent of police, he rejected the offer to join politics.

Paswan joined the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP), emerging as a Dalit leader in the post-Jagjivan Ram and pre-Kanshi Ram era. Paswan's first political breakthrough happened in 1969, when he was elected to the Bihar state assembly.

In 1975, during the Emergency, Paswan was arrested and sent to jail. After his release in 1977, Paswan contested his first Lok Sabha election from Hajipur in Bihar. Not only did he win, his name was also recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1977 for winning elections by the highest margin.

Meanwhile, Paswan’s career graph rose among party ranks too. In 1985, Paswan shifted his affiliation from the Lok Dal to the Janata Party, of which he was made the general secretary. In 1988, the Janata Dal was formed, of which the Janata Party was a smaller component. Paswan was again chosen to lead the party as the general secretary.

Paswan formed the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) in 2000 after a split in the Janata Dal over the issue of joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

The most relevant example of Paswan's "political weather scientist" image, a term coined by former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav for him, was when he rebranded himself as a secular leader and quit the Vajpayee-led government post-2002 Gujarat riots to join the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Then, in 2009, he quit the UPA ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls and started investing in the political stock of Narendra Modi ahead of the 2014 general election.

Paswan had held the charge of many cabinet portfolios, including railways, coal and mines, communication, in Union governments of all kinds of ideological and political moorings led by Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, AB Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, and Narendra Modi. Since 1996, he had been part of every Union Cabinet, except the UPA-II in 2009.