There’s no reason to feel sorry for a person like Manmohan Singh, known for his lamb-like devotion to the Nehru household — such spineless people can’t be wronged!
The ‘official’ response to journalist Sanjaya Baru’s book The Accidental Prime Minister —The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, issued by the incumbent media adviser to Manmohan Singh, was predictable. “It is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility to apparently exploit it for commercial gain,” the statement read, adding, “The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.” An ‘official’ denial, as Delhi’s Fleet Street lore goes, is a tacit confirmation. Ironically, the statement reaffirms the running theme of Baru’s book: Manmohan Singh has been in office for a decade but not in power. It is believed, on the strength of reliable information, that Manmohan Singh is gleeful about the publication of the book and the statement’s origin is neither 7 Race Course Road nor South Block but 10 Janpath.
Baru has not disclosed any startling facts, he has scrupulously recorded the making and unmaking of a Prime Minister. Much of the details have been in the public domain for long. But the fact that they have now been penned by an insider — Baru was the Prime Minister’s media adviser — give them a certain edge of credibility. The book validates the famous Independent headline, over which there was a great outpouring of ersatz anger in the Congress: “Manmohan Singh —India’s saviour or Sonia’s poodleIJ” It also brings to mind the scathingly accurate description of Manmohan Singh in Marxist economist Ashok Mitra’s autobiography, A Prattler’s Tale. Mitra wrote, “I am afraid there is little scope for politeness here... His timidity is the product of his civil servant’s mind, which many mistake as humility”, and went on to mock at Singh for his “lamb-like devotion to the Nehru household”. Senior BJP leader lK Advani was perhaps the first to volubly denounce Manmohan Singh as the “weakest Prime Minister India has ever had.” That comment was drowned in the cacophony of admiration for an economist Prime Minister who has turned out to be as much a non-performer as the party he represents in office.
Manmohan Singh himself was loath to accept the tragic reality of his powerlessness. Presumably he now realises that he ends his tenure with no legacy, reduced to a mere footnote of history. For that he is to blame as much as his political boss. Recall the angry old man act of the Prime Minister during last year’s Monsoon Session of Parliament when he raged against the Opposition. The perceived ‘anger’ of the Prime Minister was not the rage of a wronged man or a slandered politician, it was the impotent rage of a feckless person who, having offered to serve as the doormat of his boss, can’t figure out why nobody holds him in high esteem. Had Manmohan Singh been half the person he would like others to believe he is, he would have raged against Congress president and Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty matriarch Sonia Gandhi and stormed out of office. Instead he chose to not only supinely do her bidding that has fetched rack and ruin to the national economy but also demean the office he holds, bringing disrepute to South Block like no other Prime Minister has ever done, not even Chandra Shekhar during the few months he held that post.
A Prime Minister so denuded of honour, integrity and esteem couldn’t have really expected his party colleagues, leave alone those in the Opposition, to treat him with anything except contempt as they did. It is only natural that the Opposition, barring those individuals who are given to supping with Sonia Gandhi in private while denouncing the Congress in public, should have treated Manmohan Singh as beneath contempt. To pretend otherwise, as Manmohan Singh chose to do, would be to live in denial.
On that occasion Manmohan Singh made a great show of anger and anguish over being called a ‘chor’ — as some MPs were believed to have done while remonstrating against the limitless corruption under his tutelage. He need not have bothered; a lot worse had been said, and continues to be said, by his party and his boss about the Opposition and its leaders.
leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley had not allowed despise and loathing to get better of his sense of decency and decorum or else in his sharp repartee he would have gone beyond reminding Manmohan Singh that in no other democracy does a Prime Minister win a confidence vote by buying MPs. But neither decency nor decorum need restrain us from asking Manmohan Singh in which other democracy does a Prime Minister hold office without winning a direct electionIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister hold himself unaccountable for the sins of omission and commission committed in his watchIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister preside over scam after scam, scandal after scandal without so much as bothering to even offer to resignIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister shield a Railways Minister hawking top jobs to the highest bidderIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister ask his law Minister to fix the report of investigators looking into a massive scamIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister willingly mislead Parliament on crucial foreign policy issues that impinge on national securityIJ In which other democracy has a Prime Minister been repeatedly found to be telling less than the truthIJ In which other democracy does a Prime Minister slyly blame the Opposition for the swindle-and-loot, tax-and-splurge, steal-and-scoot Government he headsIJ
It is laughable that Manmohan Singh on several occasions wanted the people of India to believe that the Opposition questioning him and his Ministers on dubious deals and stalling Parliament to expose the crimes of the Congress and his amazing silence led to loss of investor confidence at home and abroad. That’s undiluted bunk. Investors did not lose confidence in India — the country and the people are the same as they were before the waning of trust happened — they lost confidence in the UPA Government, the Congress which leads this Government, and the Prime Minister who heads the Government.
Surely Manmohan Singh knew better than to expect investors to have faith in a Government whose leading lights were constantly looking for opportunities to feather their own nestsIJ Nor should he have expected us to believe that investors were not deterred by his Government’s wasteful ways. The Prime Minister conveniently forgot that imposing retrospective taxes on corporates was not the doing of the Opposition. If licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court, causing telecom investors to shy away from India, it was not because the Opposition stalled Parliament on the Great 2G Spectrum Robbery, it was because Manmohan Singh did nothing to stop the robbery that took place with his full knowledge. If big ticket reforms languished for a decade, it was not on account of the Opposition but due to the pusillanimity of the Prime Minister. We could either accept these facts or blame the crisis in Syria for our woes.
It is only befitting that the Congress should have stopped mentioning Manmohan Singh’s name at public rallies and in private conversations, unless it’s to blame him for the party’s imminent defeat in this summer’s election. True, the blame really rests at 10 Janpath’s door, but let’s not forget Manmohan Singh chose to be the doormat outside that door.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)