Manmohan Singh: Sheep in a den of wolves?

BOOK REVIEW

M. Gautham Machaiah

Sanjaya Baru’s ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ is not just a story of Manmohan Singh’s spinelessness, but a sordid commentary on the machinations of the Congress leadership, the sinister designs of the BJP, the treachery of the Left parties and the defiance of his own ministerial colleagues, a combination of which rendered the Prime Minister ineffective.

While Singh has been squarely blamed for the policy paralysis during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2), the real villains who stabbed him in the back and dealt a deadly blow on good governance were Congress president Sonia Gandhi, L.K. Advani of BJP and Prakash Karat of CPM, not to mention the Prime Minister’s own colleagues Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh and Pranab Mukherjee.

Manmohan Singh suffered in silence, but India suffered more.

When Baru, a former Media Advisor to Singh released his book in the din of the Lok Sabha elections early this year (2014), most of what he had written was lost, with the media only highlighting how Sonia Gandhi’s trusted aide in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Pulok Chatterjee shared all government files with her.

Contrary to media reports that the book shows Manmohan Singh in poor light, Baru offers a balanced view of the Prime Minister’s first term in office, often showering glorious praise where it is due.  But one question that the author has not been able to answer is: Why did the Prime Minister remain servile and stomach one humiliation after another, when he could have honourably quit?

During UPA-1, the economy logged the highest growth for any plan period since Independence and Singh had emerged as one of the tallest world leaders. At a meeting of business leaders from India and Southeast Asia in Kuala Lumpur in 2005, the Secretary General of the ASEAN, Ong Keng Yong, introduced Dr Singh as the world’s most highly qualified head of government.  In  April 2009, when a  young school student in Germany asked US President Barack Obama which politician he admired, Obama’s instant reply was, “Among existing world leaders, I admire Manmohan Singh of India the most.”

Why did Singh squander away all the good will that he had accumulated both at home and abroad?

POWER WITHOUT AUTHORITY

Manmohan Singh, in his own words became the “accidental Prime Minister” of India when Congress President Sonia Gandhi ‘renounced’ power in response to an “inner voice”, after the UPA swept to office in 2004. But the creation of the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia was the first overt sign that her ‘renunciation’ was more of a political tactic. While power was delegated to Singh, authority was not. The placing of her trusted aide Pulok Chatterjee in the PMO was aimed at ensuring a degree of control over the government.

Singh did not resent this. Instead, he came to accept the supremacy of the party over the government. As he declared in 2009: “There cannot be two centres of power. This creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party.”

Perhaps, India has not seen such a weak Prime Minister since her Independence.

The Prime Minister never questioned Sonia’s right as party president to influence portfolio allocation, not that he had a choice. Senior Congress leaders like Natwar Singh, Arjun Singh and  Pranab Mukherjee owed their cabinet posts entirely to Sonia Gandhi, while the allies reported directly to their political bosses. The Prime Minister could exercise very little control over his Cabinet because no Minister owned the position to him.

Singh’s general attitude towards corruption seemed to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others. He was himself incorruptible, and also ensured that no one in his immediate family would do anything wrong, but he did not feel answerable for the misdemeanours of his colleagues and subordinates, because he was not the political authority that had appointed them to these ministerial positions.  In practice, it meant that he turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of his Ministers. He expected the Congress party leadership to deal with the black sheep in his government, just as he expected the allies to deal with their black sheep. While his conscience was always clear with respect to his own conduct, he believed everyone had to deal with their own conscience.

As Baru puts it, “The politically fatal combination of responsibility without power and governance without authority meant that Singh was unable, even when he was aware, of checking corruption in his ministry without disturbing the political arrangement over which he nominally presided. Political power resided with the heads of parties of the coalition and as Prime Minister he could not dismiss Ministers at will. “

Singh remained wary of his Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh and took a long time to focus his energies on education which was close to his heart, before finally pushing through the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, a universal literacy programme. On the eve of a Cabinet reshuffle in 2006, he was seriously thinking of moving Arjun Singh out and sought his Media Advisor’s suggestion. Baru recalled that when a similar advice was given to former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, he recalled the response of US President Lydon Johnson when asked why he was not sacking FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, who was spying on the President, “It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” Arjun stayed on, until he was replaced by Kapil Sibal in UPA-2.

Singh shared a good working equation with Finance Minister Chidambaram in UPA-1, compared to a very formal relationship he had with Pranab Mukkerjee in UPA-2. In UPA-1, Singh took a keen interest in budget making. He would insist Chidambaram sit with him and finalise the Finance Minister’s budget speech. Pranab, on the other hand, would not even show him the draft of the speech till he finished writing it.

In UPA-2, Dr Singh had lost control over fiscal policy and much else, adds the book. In March 2012, he was not even aware till the day before the budget was to be presented that his Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was going to introduce a new corporate tax policy, with retrospective effect, that would have disastrous consequences for investor sentiment.

Pranab was never transparent in expressing his disagreement or support. After returning from an important visit as External Affairs Minister to Washington DC, he did not even show the basic courtesy of briefing the Prime Minister immediately on return, preferring to call on Sonia instead. When Singh was asked by his aides what transpired at the meeting with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the Prime plainly said: “I don’t know.”

Adding to his woes was the lacklustre leadership provided by Defence Minister A.K. Antony and the double faced strategy adopted by the then Army Chief J.J. Singh.

A RARE STREAK OF TOUGHNESS

However, the Prime Minister could be tough if he wanted to. One such occasion, when Singh displayed a rare streak of toughness, was when the Congress leadership insisted on appointing Digvijaya Singh, S.M. Krishna or Veerappa Moily as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. But the Prime Minister had his way in appointing Montek Singh Ahluwalia after striking a deal with CPM leader and coalition partner Harkishen Singh Surjeet. As Baru notes, “One wily Sardar had secured the support of another wily Sardar to get the third on board.”

The second time was when Advani and George Fernandes led an NDA delegation suggesting changes to the Finance Bill. The Prime Minister was not inclined to be kind to the Opposition which had taken a disruptive stand in the Parliament.  He received them standing in his room and did not offer them a seat, much less a cup of tea. He accepted their file, but threw it down on the table without even reading it.

The BJP remained in denial about its defeat and was refusing to extend to the new Prime Minister the basic courtesy of letting him speak in Parliament. Singh was also not allowed to introduce his Council of Ministers or read out his statement on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address or on the Vote of Confidence. Singh was deeply pained by the undemocratic act of the BJP, which refused the Parliament to function.

However, the boldest stroke of them all was when Singh openly took on the Left and also Sonia Gandhi over the nuclear deal with the United States, even threatening to resign.  It is strange that such flashes of boldness were not seen during most parts of his term in office.

BACK-STABBING OVER NUCLEAR DEAL

The nuclear deal with the US was perhaps one of Singh’s biggest achievements in office. After the nuclear tests in Pokhran in 1974 and 1998, India had been subjected to what it called nuclear apartheid by the US which laid restrictions on transfer of technology that could be used for both civilian and defence purposes.

Former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee of the BJP had initiated a new dialogue and the UPA was continuing this process. At a meeting on the nuclear deal, Singh openly told Vajpayee, “I have only completed what you have begun.” To this, senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh responded, “You have done the nation proud.” But Advani played a devious role when he chose a rigid stance to force his party to abandon the Vajpayee line and accept him as the new leader. The BJP overnight turned against the deal which its own leader Vajpayee had initiated.

But the unkindest cut came from Prakash Karat of CPM, who had agreed to support the 123 Agreement after his suggestions were incorporated. When on August 3, 2007 the government made public the agreement, Leftist editor of the Hindu, N. Ram wrote a full page editorial on the “Honourable 123 Agreement”.  He flew down to Delhi the next day to personally congratulate the Prime Minister. After the meeting he drove straight to the CPM headquarters where he learnt that Prakash Karat would not support the agreement, though it did not deviate from the red line drawn by him. Ram immediately called the Prime Minister’s Office to say that he should not go ahead with the signing of the agreement and then proceeded to write several editorials against the deal in the coming days! Such were the turncoats that Manmohan Singh had to deal with.

The Congress too took a back foot fearing that a deal with the US would alienate the Muslims, while the party spokespersons planted stories that the Prime Minister would be replaced.

Exasperated by the double standards of BJP, the back-stabbing by CPM and lack of support from his own party, Singh dared the Left parties to withdraw support. This drew a public rebuke from Sonia, who at the Hindustan Times Summit on October 12, 2007, declared that the survival of the government took precedence over the nuclear deal. It was a clear slap on the Prime Minister’s face.

However, Singh put up a bold front and responded: “I don’t think I overstepped, I am quite conscious of my responsibilities and what I should say and what I should not say.” In private, though, he rued, “She has let me down.”

The Left withdrew support but Singh managed to sail through with the help of the Samajwadi Party, and the nuclear embargo on India was finally lifted in September 2008. As Digvijaya Singh rightly summed it up on NDTV: “I don’t know if he is an overrated economist, but I know he is an underrated politician.”

MISPLACED CREDIT TO RAHUL

Singh’s top priority was to resolve the Kashmir issue. One of the first steps agreed with Pakistan President Pervez Musharaff was to make the LoC just a line on the map. As the Prime Minister would often remark, “Borders cannot be changed but they can be made irrelevant.” An out-of-the-box blueprint which could bring lasting peace to the Kashmir Valley was also ready.

While this process was on, Musharaff was invited to watch the cricket match between India and Pakistan at Delhi’s Ferozeshah Kotla grounds. When the two leaders broke for a formal meeting mid-way through the match, Musharaff began the conversation saying, “Doctor Saheb, if you and I decide we can resolve all our disputes before lunch and go back to watch the match.”  But Singh was not one to bite the bait. Wary of the disastrous Agra Summit of July 2011, where Musharaff had the last laugh and pulled a PR coup, Singh replied, “General Saheb, you are a soldier and much younger, but you must allow for my age. I can only walk step by step.”

But would the Congress want a permanent solution to the Kashmir issue? This is what the author has to say, “After all, the Kashmir problem had its roots in Nehru’s policies. Both Indira and Rajiv tried to solve it, but failed. Would Sonia who backed the peace initiative with Pakistan, finally allow Singh to resolve this legacy and enter the history books? I remained sceptic. I felt she would want to wait till Rahul became the Prime Minister, so that he could claim credit.”

Another ambitious programme over which Rahul Gandhi sought ownership was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), where a person would be offered employment for a given number of days at a specified wage. This was the brain child of Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Minister of Rural Development, who belonged to Laloo Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which later broke away from the UPA coalition.

The Prime Minister was irritated that the party propagandists gave credit to Sonia and Rahul. The party was keen to project Rahul as the architect of the programme, though he had absolutely no role in it. When on one occasion, Baru credited Singh with the scheme, all hell broke loose because Rahul was not projected. But Singh was unperturbed.  “Let them take the credit, I do not need it. I am only doing my work. I do not want any media projection,” was his reaction.

Singh silently swallowed another insult when Rahul at a press conference trashed as nonsense an ordinance, which sought to overrule a Supreme Court order on tainted MPs and MLAs continuing in office.  The public disrespect and disregard for the dignity of office of the Prime Minister was sufficient reason for Singh to quit, but he preferred to stay on.

It is difficult to explain why the Prime Minister displayed such spinelessness even after his handsome victory for a second time in 2009.  In fact, the Congress which was not confident of winning these elections had printed the pictures of Singh and not Rahul on the manifesto and on posters, so that the Prime Minister could be blamed for the expected defeat and Rahul could claim leadership as an agent of change. 

But the Prime Minister seems to have made the cardinal mistake of imagining that the victory was his. Bit by bit in the space of a few weeks he was defanged.  He thought he could induct Ministers he wanted to the team, but Sonia nipped him in the bud and offered finance to Pranab without even consulting the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister wanted to put his foot down on the induction of A. Raja of DMK who later came to be embroiled in the 2G scam, but he was overruled. Singh’s hands were so tightly tied by Sonia that he could not even re-appoint Baru as his Media Advisor for a second term.

A friend of Rahul who is an analyst with a consulting firm put out a paper suggesting that Singh had become a liability for the government. After a series of humiliations many wondered why Singh was not calling it a day. Was he adamant about completing his tenure, which he believed was something he had earned through his hard work? Or was he just giving Sonia time to help her prepare Rahul for the transition? Was he overstaying her invitation or holding fort?

These questions posed by the author have no convincing answers.

Though Baru laments that Singh devalued the office of the Prime Minister by his subservience, he notes, “Singh remains not just a good man, but in the final analysis, also a good Prime Minister. No Congress leader including Sonia Gandhi or its heir apparent Rahul Gandhi, can match his unique combination of personal integrity, administrative experience, international stature and political appeal across a swathe of public opinion.”

In his last press conference as Prime Minister on January 3, 2014, Singh said, “I believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter the Opposition in Parliament.”

Let us hope so, for Manmohan Singh is an honourable man.


Sanjaya Baru
The Accidental Prime Minister
Penguin Group, 2014, Rs 599