https://www.heraldgoa.in/Edit/By-invitation/Here-comes-Claire/196628
It feels almost routine when another child of the Konkan ascends ever-greater heights in the west, but this week’s appointment of Claire Coutinho as the UK’s new Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing really takes another giant step into the unprecedented. The 37-year-old is – amazingly enough – the second Goan woman minister in Rishi Sunak’s government, with Suella Fernandes Braverman as Home Secretary. Meanwhile, across the parliamentary aisle in the Shadow Cabinet, is the well-regarded veteran Valerie Vaz. This means there are as many Goan women in the British parliament as in the state legislature back home. That isn’t the end of it because you also have Shirley Rodrigues, the dynamic Deputy Mayor of London for Environment and Energy, and Leo Varadkar also counts: the game-changing Irish politician who is scheduled to become prime minister again next month (and whose father’s roots are in Malvan). Then, across in Portugal, the prime minister Antonio Costa is not only Goan but an Overseas Citizen of India, who received his OCI card directly from Narendra Modi. He has two more Goans in his own Cabinet. Who is Claire Coutinho, the quietly competent politician understood to be close to Rishi Sunak, and – just like her boss – both pragmatic and efficient, with centrist political leanings quite different from the unhinged fringe that has recently dominated the UK public sphere? We know she’s the privately educated daughter of NHS doctors who migrated from India in the 1970s. She studied mathematics and philosophy at Oxford, and served the government as a special advisor before winning East Surrey in 2019. My attention fixed on Coutinho in January 2020, when she made an extremely charming maiden speech, starting with gently ribbing the incumbent before her (who had rebelled against his party during the Brexit debacle): “I’d like to begin by paying tribute to my predecessor Sam Gyimah. We have more in common than representing East Surrey. We are both the children of immigrant doctors. I too, am 5 foot 4 and a half. And although we may have slightly different views on Brexit, I know that he was passionate about the prosperity of this country which our families now call home.” I was struck by what Coutinho chose to emphasize: “In Outwood near Godstone, work began in 1665 on one of the oldest working British windmills. The owner is said to have watched the Great Fire of London rage 25 miles away from its roof. And I’m proud that what East Surrey helped to pioneer in the renewable energy sector in the 17th Century, has now become one of the most remarkable success stories in the UK today. Not only are we the world leader in offshore wind, seven out of ten of the biggest wind farms in Europe are right here in the UK. I commend the ambitious Environment Bill put forward in Her Majesty’s Gracious speech to forward this work and I look forward to seeing the Green measures in the upcoming Budget which will undoubtedly build on this work further.” Then, even more impressively, came this touching denouement: “I would like in this speech to mention my grandmother, who may be the single greatest emblem of Conservative values that I know. She was a teacher in India who in my memory took her fashion lead firmly from the Queen. She raised seven children with little resource but with a strong sense that with hard work and determination you can achieve the impossible. Her children were doctors and teachers and Grade 8 musicians and are now scattered all across the globe. If she could see me here today – in ‘the noblest Government in the world’ - she would, I’m sure, tell me to work hard, be determined and achieve the impossible. Politicians today have a near impossible task. We live in a world of changing technology, behaviour, demographics and indeed - as has been the subject of many excellent speeches today – environment. I hope in this place to contribute in a small way to preparing this great country for the future to come.” Simple, heartfelt, straight to the point and eminently sane: all increasingly rare attributes in our era of relentless extremism. One gets the distinct impression that Coutinho is genuinely interested in service, which is how democratic politicians were always supposed to be, but nowadays so very rarely are. And that same sentiment also came across in her reaction to the big appointment this week: “I spent a good chunk of my career looking at how we help families and give children the best possible start in life. Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet for success, so I’m very excited to share that I’m now Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing.” Coutinho is the opposite of polarizing, and any serious country would be satisfied – even proud – about having someone as capable as her running an important ministry. But is there any significance to her ethnicity? In this regard, it’s interesting to note how India and Indians (and, by corollary, Goa and Goans) are being hectored non-stop about the appropriate reaction to someone they consider their own catapulting to leadership in far-off countries, and – more specifically - this very odd unelected Tory government, where an unending revolving door of ethnic minority faces have been switching and out of senior roles. To some, it’s “an incredible achievement.” Others say we are being bamboozled - it’s not faces that matter but policies. I liked what Sunny Hundal wrote in the *FT* last month: “Most Conservatives welcomed [Rishi Sunak] but said his background was irrelevant. Many on the left cautiously celebrated the broken glass ceiling, but said he was too rich to be representative. However, there is an important global context missing from this debate. Rishi Sunak has been tasked with leading the country, despite his brown skin and Hindu beliefs, because Britain is increasingly comfortable with being a multicultural democracy. We are becoming a nation where different races, faiths and gender identities are embraced. We still argue over our differences and there are many biases to be tackled, but our diversity is increasingly, and rightly, regarded as a strength. Some on the left see this as unremarkable, but it really isn’t. Most of our ideological brethren across Europe and east Asia pay lip-service to diversity but resist it fiercely in practice. Worse, about 70 per cent of people worldwide live under dictatorships. Multicultural democracies are a minority within a minority.” Hundal concluded that “authoritarians believe diversity leads to conflict and decay. They want nations that put their own tribes first. For Putin this means white heterosexual Russians, for the Chinese Communist party it means protecting and enforcing Han culture and language. For Muslim-majority countries it means putting Muslims first, while for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party it means putting Hindus first. It’s important we accept that multiculturalism isn’t easy. Maintaining social cohesion is hard work and easily derailed. Our social media-driven environment — which rewards exaggerating differences and dunking on small dissimilarities — makes it even more difficult. There is no reason why multicultural democracies should be the norm. But this is the world I want to live in and fight for.”