By Indranil Banerjea
Why did Manmohan Singh fail? And did he really fail? These two questions may appear contradictory. But they lie at the heart of the puzzle called Manmohan Singh. And it is scarcely a conundrum if you get past the maze of superfluous frippery. Manmohan Singh is very easily explained and understood as a bureaucrat, a sort of exalted cabinet secretary, as this writer tweeted long ago, in the relative infancy of the social media. More charitably still, his omissions and commissions, his actions and inactions, can be seen as those of a Union cabinet minister, not a particularly imaginative one, following the diktats of his political boss. Manmohan Singh had two political bosses, namely P.V. Narasimha Rao and his present one, Sonia Gandhi. He did and he continues to do for his present chief what is desired, which is nothing more than orders wrapped in the soft covers of desire. This is all there is to Manmohan Singh. And it is entirely specious to call him prime minister.
It is well known that Manmohan Singh was not Narasimha Rao’s first choice finance minister. But because I.G. Patel refused the offer, Manmohan Singh as an old Nehru-Gandhi family acolyte and loyalist was chosen. Patel did not have a high opinion of Manmohan Singh as an economist. He thought him a better politician. What he perhaps meant was that Manmohan Singh was a survivor who always knew which side of the bread was buttered. To the extent that his career was uninterruptedly advanced, Manmohan Singh was loyal to his benefactors. Mark this. Apart from an aberrant sense of personal financial honesty, Manmohan Singh was not wedded to any kind of truth or goodness. It is hard to imagine that he believed — or still believes — in anything, which includes the subject he is trained in, economics. Once these aspects are comprehended, Manmohan is revealed as a small man who overreached himself.
So long Narasimha Rao was his prime minister, Manmohan Singh did all he was told. If it was reforms that the prime minister wanted, Manmohan Singh delivered like an automaton, mindless of the excesses. After the Congress’s defeat in the Andhra Pradesh election, Narasimha Rao pulled back on the reforms’ agenda, complaining that it could not be sold to the electorate in any manner. Manmohan Singh threatened to resign according to the media but whether he sent a resignation letter to Narasimha Rao is a matter of conjecture. But when Narasimha Rao wouldn’t budge from his political stand against in your face reforms, Manmohan Singh ate humble pie and returned to his North Block office. When he first took over as finance minister, there was anger in the Left that he had abandoned the South-South line and whole heartedly embraced the Washington Consensus. But did Manmohan Singh believe in anything for anyone to feel upset that he had deserted a cause?
Taken in by his earliest reforms’ measures covering the business-economics domain for a print publication, this writer, unfortunately, had plugged for Manmohan Singh as prime minister. This was also partly from anger and distress at the venal communal politics of cow belt politicians such as Arjun Singh. Should Sonia Gandhi desist from becoming prime minister, the man she could trust not to stab her in the back was Manmohan Singh. The idea was reinforced subsequently, especially after the tragic and untimely deaths of go getting Congress leaders like Madhavrao Scindia and Rajesh Pilot. And Manmohan Singh seemed an ideal choice when an upset win in 2004 brought the UPA to power. Many intellectuals quite frankly, could not accept a person of foreign origin as the Indian prime minister. As a decent technocrat carrying the halo of the 1991-94 reforms, Manmohan Singh appeared suitable for the top job, and in the best interests of the country, he was promoted.
But who could imagine he would turn out such a disaster? All his bureaucratic/ loyalist instincts came to the surface, and from day one, he functioned as Sonia Gandhi’s cabinet secretary or ministerial underling. His first prime minister (excluding Indira Gandhi) was Narasimha Rao. His second chieftain was Sonia Gandhi. His ministers owed their positions and consequently their loyalties to 10- Janpath. Manmohan Singh chaired the group of ministers, not a cabinet. In one of his rare press conferences some days ago, Manmohan Singh spoke glowingly of his achievement with the India-United States nuclear deal. Any credit for taking India-United States’ relations to the point of the deal must be shared equally with the predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee administration. But it is a little more complicated. The nuclear deal was on president George Bush’s agenda and wish list. Why he wanted such a deal with India is the subject of multiple interpretations, including that he saw it as a package for close defence ties with the United States, deemed it a balancing arrangement vis-a-vis China’s threatening rise, and that he envisaged it as a means to kick-start America’s regressed nuclear power industry. Whatever the truth, it is simply not the case that Manmohan Singh successfully and of his own will initiated the nuclear deal. Nor can he take any credit for its consummation. From first to last, it was orchestrated by the American side, to the extent that India’s Parliament was kept in the dark about the sensitive giveaways. If India cannot force the United States for the custody of the terrorist, David Coleman Headley, or bring honourable closure to the Devyani Khobragade affair, it is risible to suppose that the nuclear deal was undertaken at Indian behest. America does nothing for nobody without a mighty trade-off. It is not known as a transactional power for nothing. What Manmohan Singh will be infamous for apropos the nuclear deal is that he won a corrupt confidence vote in Parliament related to its passage. Call it poetic justice, but Parliament avenged with a tough liability law that has deterred the American nuclear industry from investing in India, terrified of the prospect of astronomical payouts from a second disaster worse than at Bhopal. The sole proud moment for Manmohan Singh was when he turned down Western aid during the Asian tsunami of 2004, but in the rest of his two terms, he made India into a mendicant nation.
So did Manmohan Singh fail? Not really. He was never meant to fail or to succeed. His “prime minister” on the second occasion, Sonia Gandhi, saw him as a stopgap for Rahul Gandhi. INAV