#dnaEdit: Clean and controversial

Had Raosaheb Ramrao Patil, popular as RR Patil, lived for a few more days, he would have definitely opposed Mumbai police commissioner’s latest move. On Sunday morning, the city’s partygoers cheered Rakesh Maria’s decision to allow restaurants, bars, and pubs to remain open all night. Patil, who had been instrumental in closing down Mumbai’s dance bars in 2005, rendering thousands of women without a livelihood, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 58, after a multi-organ failure. He was suffering from oral cancer.

Patil’s puritanical streak had found admirers among the conservatives in the government. He managed to amend an existing order in June 2012 to plug a loophole that the Supreme Court pointed out when it decided to strike down the ban on dance bars. But his gaffes earned him many enemies. They even overshadowed some of his laudable attributes. The Mr Clean image, his rise from humble origins, and his oratorial skills could do little to save him when the veteran Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) politician was stripped off power for making insensitive comments after the 26/11 attack. Patil, then home minister and deputy chief minister in the Congress-NCP government, had allegedly said: “Only a few people had died, it could have been worse…Such small incidents happen in big countries like India.” He fought his way back and was reinstated as home minister in less than a year. Patil courted controversy again — before the 2014 assembly elections — with his rape remark. However, he survived the Modi wave and defeated his BJP opponent in the Sangli constituency, though NCP and the Congress were routed in the state. 

Patil could weather many a political storm because he began at the grass roots, and rose through the ranks with his perseverance and keen political acumen. The son of a farmer, he got his law degree because of an employee guarantee scheme. Later he had to overcome fierce opposition from within the party and in the Congress for key positions in the state government. In 2004, he was elected deputy CM on the basis of an intra-party poll. In the age of dynastic politics, he was an outsider, and he always kept his family outside the trappings of power. The day after he was sworn in as deputy CM, his children went for a medical check up at a city hospital as ordinary citizens. Though Patil never enjoyed pan-Maharashtrian popularity, he was always sympathetic to the rural poor. The crowd outside his office, when he was in power, would testify to that. Long before Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign, as rural minister he had held competitions to keep villages clean. 

An NCP strongman, he tended his constituency well, but his popularity had declined in Sangli — evident from the victory margin in the 2014 elections. He was elected to the Maharashtra legislative assembly six times — in 1990, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014, from Tasgaon. Patil began his political journey as a Sangli zila parishad member and became a legislator in 1990 on a Congress ticket. 

In the words of veteran journalist Mahesh Vijapurkar, “Leaders like Patil offer brick and mortar to a party’s political structure.” He was somewhat of an exception in NCP, which has been reeling under allegations of corruption and nepotism. Yet he thrived and made a mark. That in itself is a remarkable achievement.