Kapil Sibal - a champion of clean government

Some advocates say that, on a good day, Kapil Sibal could expect to take home Rs500,000 (around $10,000), about double what Arun Jaitley might make from his legal practice.

That Sibal has given up that kind of professional income to become a minister bespeaks extraordinary vision, determination and ambition.

After a relatively short political career, the new representative of Delhi's prestigious Chandni Chowk constituency has already been given independent charge as a minister of state, but he is a man to watch. He is unlikely to rest on this laurel long.

Seizing on the opportunity his charge of science and technology gives him, he has announced within a week of becoming minister that tests abroad have shown that the Tehelka tapes (showing leading lights of the previous regime taking bribes) were genuine.

By adding, along with announcement, that the allegations of corruption in the purchase of coffins by the Defence Ministry should be probed further, he has deftly projected himself as this government's champion of clean administration.

He says candidly that he had asked not to be given the law ministry – which many had predicted. Conflicts of interest would have arisen, he explains, pointing out that Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mayawati, some of those involved in the Bofors case, and Reliance are among his clients.

"Anything I did as law minister to defend them politically would have been misinterpreted," he says, "and the integrity and reputation I have developed over the past 20 years would have gone to pieces."

Some of his friends add that, while he indeed did not want law, he had his eye on external affairs. If that is true, an element of sibling rivalry could be involved. His brother was until recently the foreign secretary. And his late wife too was a member of the Foreign Service.

Sibal certainly is one of the most urbane, articulate members of the new Parliament. Indeed, he first caused ripples in the political world when he held forth for hours from the bar of the House about a decade ago in defence of Justice S. Rawaswamy of Supreme Court, whose impeachment for corruption Parliament was then debating.

Ramaswamy was not impeached.

Now that Sibal is responsible for Ocean Development (along with Science and Technology), he says that he will have to deal with some very complicated legal issues regarding the Law of the Sea.

He speaks excitedly of the discovery on the ocean bed in India's exclusive economic zone of nodules containing copper, cobalt and zinc, which could be of vital strategic and economic value.
The ocean bed could be of increasing value in the future in other ways too, says Sibal, adding that "the area we can exploit is two-thirds of the land mass of India" and that the measurements and experiments that his department undertakes are of key significance at a time of swift climate change.

Third, he says, the department is working on generating power by using the difference in temperature between the surface of the sea and water below. A plant has been set up for this. The department is also working with technology to convert saline water into potable water. He adds that the output of the ministry's technology is 12 paise cheaper than that produced by the Ambani-owned plant on the Saurashtra coast.