A Winner All The Way

The Great Reformer has won the day - and lives to fight another day. Despite his all too obvious lack of leadership qualities, Manmohan Singh has been a winner all the way: first as a techno-bureaucrat, then as Finance minister and now as the Prime Minister of the country. As Finance Minister in the minority PV Narasimha Rao government in the early nineties, the good doctor administered the tottering Indian economy perhaps its bitterest ever shock therapy by ushering in the most sweeping reforms imaginable and – wonder of wonders – not only got away with it but has actually been feted for it ever since. While there was never any doubt about the fact that the former Governor of Reserve Bank knew his economics, he was certainly a political greenhorn when Rao pulled him out of nowhere to make him the Finance minister of the country. But Manmohan was nothing if not a quick learner – even in a field which had never been his domain. And he put the lessons in realpolitik that he learnt under the tutelage of perhaps the most underrated Prime Minister of the country to good effect when he became Prime Minister himself. Having seen from close quarters how the wily Rao weathered the very real threat to his minority government in 1993 by scripting the infamous JMM bribery case, Manmohan did a Rao in August 2008 to save his crippled government which had just lost its crutch in the shape of the Left. More than four years after the event, I still remember every single detail of the dramatic happenings on that eventful day. In my mind’s eye, I can still see him coming out of Parliament, V Narayansami and others in tow, beaming from ear to ear and flashing the ‘V’ sign from various angles for the benefit of the camerapersons in attendance. [The visual has actually become a bit of a signature tune for MMS given the zillion times that it has been aired on television as a ‘File Shot’ ever since. If you are a little attentive, you can watch it on TV even now, generally with the headlines.] Television channels, on their part, kept beaming the bearded winner all day long with the contemporary hit ‘Singhh is Kingg’ playing loudly on the background. It was the day Singh won his first real political battle. But it was also the day he lost his innocence. Asked by an enterprising reporter about allegations of crores of rupees changing hands to save his government, the just anointed Kingg asked a counter-question by way of an answer, “But where is the proof?”, knowing fully well that no power on earth can unearth the ‘proof’ now that he had weathered the challenge to his Prime Ministership. How true he was!! He has a Teflon-like quality that no other politician living or dead has/had. Nothing sticks to him. He may preside over the most brazen act of bribery to save his government, but nobody has so much as pointed a finger at him. It has all been duly blamed on the dirty-tricks department of the Congress. He may acquiesce in the massive loot of the exchequer in the form of the spectacular spectrum scam, but nobody is ready to believe that he facilitated it knowingly. Even now when it has been proved beyond any shade of doubt that the systematic selling (it was not even selling, but pure and simple gifting away) of the family silver, nay coal, happened right under his watch as the Coal minister, the commentariat is busy singing homilies to his ‘personal integrity’. Pray, what use is it if the man with this precious attribute has no compunction whatsoever in putting up with people utterly devoid of this precious attribute all around him. Years ago, when the Harshad Mehta scam blew on the face of an unsuspecting nation still recovering from the after effects of Dr Singh’s shock therapy, Manmohan had said he was ‘not going to lose any sleep over it.’ May be we should have paid greater attention to the import of what he had said back in 1993. May be we should have known that the good doctor could sail through the longest-ever procession of the most brazen scandals without losing any sleep over it. The only thing over which Manmohan loses sleep, it would appear, is when the natives do not understand the ‘economics’ behind the hike in fuel prices/cap on the number of subsidized LPG cylinders, when the courts tell the government to distribute rice rotting in the open due to lack of storage space free to the hungry or when the’ The Washington Post’ dubs him a ‘tragic figure’. For all his benign visage, Manmohan Singh has a vicious side to him which bursts through the carefully cultivated exterior every now and then. Odias who watched his televised address to the nation on Friday could not have missed a phrase that he used during his address: ‘Paisa ped par nahin ugta.’ [‘Money does not grow on trees’]. It was a phrase he was using publicly for the second time. The first time was when MPs from Odisha had gone to request him to for a special package for the state. When the PM’s insensitive and below-the-belt comment became a raging controversy in the state, he clarified that he was ‘just joking’. I wonder which one is more offensive; the original comment or the ‘joke’ part!! Just as Narasimha Rao needs to be complimented for spotting the man for the moment at a time of great economic crisis, the Empress of Congress needs to be given 10 out of 10 for spotting the politician in Manmohan. Just as his mentor kept Sonia Gandhi at bay for as long as he was at the helm of the party and the government, Manmohan has kept the perennial crown-prince waiting in the wings for as long as he is at the helm. Bravo Manmohan! [This column was first published in The Political and Business Daily.]