Nandan Nilekani is a man most of educated India respects. As co-founder of Infosys and later its chief executive officer after fellow founder and mentor Narayana Murthy’s exit, he is among those who shaped the Indian IT dream.

As chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), he also became the poster boy for a government that reached more ports of scams and breached records of corruption than any other in memory. He has reportedly now become the big catch for the Congress as the party gets up and dusts itself in preparation for the Lok Sabha elections, scheduled next year.

If he joins the party and fights the elections from Bangalore (South) constituency, as is being reported, he would be the party’s answer to Narendra Modi’s pro-industry image and the counter to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s pro-poor images. Nilekani’s reported jump on the political bandwagon is being welcomed on the grounds that it would be a welcome change for Indian politics; that professionals like him, making a lateral entry into politics, would make the body politic a better, more transparent place; that more actual work, rather than procreation of noise in the name of work would be done. And so on.

But is it true? Can he actually change the way the business of politics is done in the country?

ALSO SEE DAY’S DEBATE: Can technocrats like Nilekani usher in any change in politics?

The biggest example before Nilekani is the prime minister. Manmohan Singh is still said to be an incorruptible man (strictly in matters pecuniary, according to some) and yet lords over a cabinet that has more skeletons in more cupboards duly marked “SCAM!” alongside the skull and crossbones mark than perhaps any other in independent India.

Just the fact that Nilekani is running for a Lok Sabha seat, which purportedly gives him more popular ‘legitimacy’, will hardly make any difference. Post election – if he runs and wins, that is – he would still have to work in the same set-up that has had many professionals like him the past, and consigned them to being the face of a certain party. Such intellectuals usually end up making the rounds of television channel studios, defending the action of the bigger leaders.

That Nilekani is a technocrat par excellence with a proven track record is in no doubt. That he has also delivered on the Aadhaar card front to some extent is also points well taken. But what needs to be realised before being overtly emotional about the One Big Chance of setting right the political scene is that he worked without the trappings and whims of political parties or their leaders in the former, and no one really considered him party the insider circle in his latter role. Even as the UIDAI chairman, despite all the opposition from other ministers and ministries, he was considered by and large an outsider – an import to the set-up.

But once in the thick of things, he would lose that advantage. There’s no reason why, just to take an example, India Inc could expect Nilekani to deliver more as a Lok Sabha MP than most other MPs – there is little reason to imagine he would have been able to stop the UPA government from going ahead with the land acquisition or food bills – both seen, correctly or otherwise, as anti-industry. Or for that matter talked the government into not tweaking the FDI in retail law, which made it slightly unwieldy to make much sense, ergo bring in business.

There is little reason to believe he would be any more successful than other professionals, like Derek O’Brien, who has ended up as Mamata Banerjee’s spokesperson for the English-speaking janata, a successful bureaucrat like PL Punia, now turned into the Congress’s face in deliberations dealing with ‘backward’ castes, Mani Shankar Aiyar, successful diplomat turned a bit of a nothing man for the Congress, or NK Singh and Pavan K Varma, highflying IAS and IFS officers and intellectuals who have become regulars on news channels for JD(U).

Can Nilekani do any better? More importantly, would the party ‘high command’ give him any more elbow space? Unlikely, but then India lives in hope – of a better monsoon, better crop, relief from inflation and reprieve from politicians!