A great Economist but a poor PM
Dr. Manmohan Singh’s 10-year term as Prime Minister
has come to an end.
Dr. Singh bows out of office, the
economy is gripped by a serious slowdown, inflation is stubborn, industrial
output growth is negative and investment sentiment is at its lowest in recent
memory. The absence of a strong, assertive prime minister was felt in the
aftermath of the spectrum scandal and the coal-blocks allocation scam.
Dr. Singh’s stewardship of India’s geo-strategic challenges
must be given fair marks — though many of his projects have remained works in
progress, and future historians may debate if the gains were born of
circumstance or strategy. India’s
entry into the G20 was helped along by his standing as an economist and scholar
who could engage with ease with world leaders on global economic issues. Dr.
Singh’s first term saw an unprecedented deepening of ties with the United
States. Those ties are on a firmer footing than ever before.
However, the negative dominated over the positive in
case of Dr Manmohan Singh. Given his own lack of a political base, Dr. Singh
was bound to feel the pressures of running a government under the watch of
Congress President Sonia Gandhi. The emergence of a third power centre in the
person of Rahul Gandhi later constrained the working of the government. The
National Advisory Council, chaired by Sonia, functioned as a shadow cabinet
moving and vetting important policy decisions. This is the reason why the BJP was able to
portray Dr. Singh as a weak and ineffectual Prime Minister and Ms. Gandhi as a
powerful extra-constitutional authority.
History will remember Dr. Manmohan Singh as "The
Economist" who opened up Indian economy to grow far more quickly than they
would otherwise have done. His role as a Prime Minister may draw flak towards
the end simply because Politics is not his cup of tea. He is an honorable man
who is "over qualified" for Politics.
That he was a great human being alone wouldn’t qualify anyone to head a
vibrant largest democracy of the world. By no yardstick, that would suffice.
What the nation looked forward to was a “Leader”, a “Visionary” and one who
could make the Nation stand up to the strongest of Nation, one who cares for
every Indian (not just a section, and definitely not a foreign lady), one who
puts his foot down against adversaries (or friends) in the interest of the
Nation. It needs no repetition that he failed on all these counts.
It was not Dr Manmohan Singh who was humiliated – it
was the Office of Prime Minister that was debased and denigrated.
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