An explosive book has revealed how Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made every possible compromise to be in office during the UPA II, surrendering before the diktats of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the UPA constituents. Authored by Singh’s former media adviser Sanjaya Baru, the book echoes oft-repeated charge leveled by the BJP against Singh that he was the weakest Prime Minister of India.
Baru, who advised the PM on media policy between 2004 and 2008, points to Singh’s discomfort with dual centre of power. “That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party,” the PM told him, according to the 301-page book, The Accidental Prime Minister — The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, published by Penguin.
Baru writes that after UPA II came to power, in the space of a few weeks he (PM) was “defanged.” “He thought he could induct the ministers he wanted into his team. Sonia nipped that hope in the bud by offering the finance portfolio to Pranab (Mukherjee), without even consulting him (PM),” Baru writes.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office denounced Baru’s claims. “It is an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser,” said the PM’s office in a statement. It added that the Prime Minister had told senior editors in October last, “Do not believe all he is saying.”
Baru claims that Singh wanted to appoint his principal economic adviser C Rangarajan, “the comrade with whom he had battled the balance of payments crisis of 1991-92”, as Finance Minister.
The PM was also overruled on the induction of A Raja of the DMK well before the 2G scam came into public knowledge. “After asserting himself for a full twenty-four hours, he caved in to pressure from both his own party and the DMK,” says Baru’s book. It says that besides resisting the induction of Raja, the PM had also opposed the inclusion of TR Baalu in the Cabinet, “for their unsavoury reputations”. He succeeded in the case of Baalu, but had to yield ground on Raja.
According to him, Sonia’s “renunciation” of power was more a political tactic than higher calling or to an “inner voice” as she put it in June, 2004 after she chose not to take up the post of Prime Minister despite leading the Congress to electoral success.
“But, while power was delegated, authority was not,” he writes, citing the instance of her unsuccessful effort to appoint a retired Tamil Nadu official as Principal Secretary to the PM and to place her trusted aide Pulok Chatterjee in the PMO. The retired official had worked with Rajiv Gandhi but had declined Sonia’s invitation.
Baru cites the creation of the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia, in 2004 as the first sign that Sonia’s renunciation of power was a political tactic. It had created a parallel policy structure. Singh had realised that he had no option but to live with it although it seemed that “he was not too comfortable” with it.
No one in Singh’s council of ministers seemed to feel that he owed his position, rank or portfolio to him. The final word always was that of leaders of the parties constituting the UPA, says the book.
Referring to senior Congress ministers, Baru says that bringing the politically ambitious Arjun Singh, the left-of-centre AK Antony and the “presumed PM-in-waiting” Pranab Mukherjee into line was always a challenge for the PM. “Each had a mind of his own and each was conscious of his political status and rank”.
The book argues that the limits of PM’s political authority and the PMO’s institutional weakness meant that there was very little control of the PM and his office over the misdemeanours of ministers.
Singh shared a good working equation with Finance Minister P Chidambaram in UPA-I compared to the very formal relationship with Pranab Mukherjee in UPA-II. He would insist that Chidambaram sit with him and finalise the Budget speech but Mukherjee would not even show him the draft of the speech till he had finished writing it. Baru says that for Congress MPs the leader to please was always Sonia. “They did not see loyalty to the PM as a political necessity, nor did Dr Singh seek loyalty in the way Sonia and her aides sought it.”
He cites the instance of Jairam Ramesh, then a minister of state, who had embarrassed the PM “by leaking a letter” that Sonia had written to Dr Singh cautioning him against pursuing a Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN. A few weeks later, PM’s response to that letter had also been leaked to a newspaper allegedly by Ramesh for which he was “reprimanded” by the PM although he denied any role in the leak.
Baru cites his own case when the PM wanted to reappoint him as a secretary in the PMO after the 2009 victory but had later been informed that this had created problems with the Congress party after which Singh had told him that he could not take him back.
“To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM’s display of spinelessness,” he says wondering why Singh had succumbed to the pressure to keep him out.
The book also claims that at the peak of the political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal in the summer of 2008, Manmohan Singh had threatened to quit if the UPA coalition was to buckle under left pressure and had told Sonia Gandhi to look for his replacement. Baru says he had learnt Sonia had asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, to convince the PM not to resign.
Subsequently, the Government was allowed to proceed with the deal and go to the international nuclear watchdog IAEA for securing nuclear waiver and the PM stayed on to win a parliamentary vote of confidence after the left had withdrawn support.