Mr.Manmohan Singh

That Mr.Singh lacks the quality of leadership to govern a complex and corrupt country like India and also the spine to stand up and get counted when things go wrong were very clear even earlier.  What the TV tamasha on Feb 16th proved further is that he is a very confused man who is torn between his innate personal integrity, sullied beyond redemption by his political actions/inaction, and his enormous gratitude to his political masters, the 2Gs, without whose benevolence he would not have climbed to the pre-eminent position of the PM of India.

If it was the same Mr.Singh who was the governor of RBI in the 80s-90s, I am sure he would have resigned and gone home, if so much muck was slapped on his person and he had nowhere to go to clean it!!  Or even when he was the Finance Minister. That was because he was still quintessentially the good academic and clean bureaucrat, who had a similar job to do at a higher level, with the support of a PM (Narasimha Rao) who trusted his judgement in certain areas.  His breadth of responsibilities did not go beyond the familiar turf of Finance and he was comfortable in that. 

When Sonia decided not to take on the job of the PM, she looked around for that someone with immense personal integrity, with a proven ability to do a job at that level, preferably without too much grass-root support and completely devoid of political ambition and she had a prefabricated candidate in Mr.Singh.  It was easy for Mr.Singh to marshal the troops in Finance ministry and deliver what was expected of him, using his known skills and experience.   Whenever there was a conflict between his plans and what other politicians in the party wanted, his political boss managed to iron out the creases, convinced by Mr.Singh's position.  But, when Mr.Singh was made the PM, the dice got loaded against him, simply because this position is all about political skill and management and he would for ever be a novice in that area! Mr.Singh had no power or ammunition at all with him, but was being asked to fight a battle, completely relying on some backroom manipulators! I am sure Mr.Singh had his misgivings about his ability to handle this job, knowing fully well that he was completely out of his depth and had to depend entirely on the Gandhis to manage the hordes of power hungry and corrupt politicians.  The key difference is that as a FM he KNEW the job, but needed political support to execute, whereas as PM, he did not have any qualification for the job except that he was a trusted man of integrity.  The seeds of disaster were sown then.  Even though people were pleased to see a man of his integrity in the PM's position, I am sure many wondered how he was taking the job, knowing fully well that it was a minefield waiting to explode.  A misplaced sense of responsibility to the country and loyalty to the Gandhi family probably drove the soft spoken Sardar to voluntarily walk to the guillotine??  And loads of assurances from Sonia and Rahul G.

That Mr.Singh managed to ride the crest for 7 years without any major controversy can only be attributed to the good fortune of the Sardar.  I somehow believe that this has nothing to do with `coalition politics', despite repeated bleating from Mr.Singh.  Even if it is a completely Congress government, under similar circumstances, Mr.Singh would have been left stuttering for words, lost for ideas to quell the diabolically corrupt actions of his own partymen.  Simply because he is not a hard-boiled politician.  They say you have to be a thief to catch another and it is very true that in order to master the art of controlling other politicians, you have to learn to think like the tribe every step.  Very few can make the transition from a good bureaucrat to decent politician and Mr.Singh probably did not have it in him to do that.

I am sure his intuition told him when the scams began to break out that he should quit; I wonder why he did not do it then and why he is still there now.  I am sure that he has not been replaced, simply because Sonia still does not have a better and safer candidate and Mr.Singh's personal image is still in tact in that he is not being accused of collusion in the corrupt deals.  She still has some use for Mr.Singh.  What is unclear is why is Mr.Singh still putting up with this farce and doling out pitiable excuses for all the mismanagement and lack of leadership instead of resigning at the first signs of trouble??  He knows he has not been able to control the reins of the government, as a PM should have.  This has turned out to be Mr.Singh's Achilles' heal and inexplicably so. So, why?  Is it due to a phenomenal change in character of the once respected bureaucrat that has made him rather power hungry, disregarding all the humiliation he is being subjected to?? Has he really become a full fledged, pachyderm of a politician all of a sudden?  Or is it because he has been pressured into staying on, with the Damocle's sword hanging over his head?  Has he been blackmailed, threatened with being personally dragged into the corruption scandals if he withdrew from the scene now?  If not this, what is compelling Mr.Singh to continue, when it is clear that a whole lot of unholy things have happened in his tenure recently? 

Or, have we all made a mistake about Mr.Singh being a man of personal integrity?  Has he always been a `politician', but managed to conceal that fact under a carefully cultivated facade, which no one saw, except probably the Gandhis??   Did we make the wrong judgement to begin with, about this individual??  I intuitively feel that is not the case and Mr.Singh has not changed much personally.  May be, I am wrong.  But, there is no clear answer as to why he has not resigned long back, which would have been true to the character of Mr.Singh of the 80s and 90s,  if this onslaught on his clean image could be seen like a tornado in the distance!!