A One Year-Old Man

The UPA government completes a year on May 22. A person acknowledged as highly qualified for the job in the PM's seat. A group of mostly well qualified people to keep him and his cabinet honest - with respect to the government's programme - and to advise him. The PM, who is not too political anyway, saved the task of attending to inter-party and intra-party politics and the party's day to day operations. The party president takes care of it. Performance wise a six out of ten is what he gives himself. Probably fair.

So what do the columnists say about all this? S Anklesaria Aiyar writes about it here (link via India Uncut).

The starting paragraph of Mr Aiyar's eulogy :

Journalists galore are pontificating over the first year of Manmohan Singh’s rule. But the issue itself is wrongly phrased. It assumes that Manmohan Singh is the ruler. That is not and cannot be the case in the Congress party. Only members of the Gandhi family may rule. Others act at their pleasure.

I don't know about the wrong phrasing but the issue is definitely wrongly worded by Mr Aiyar. The word 'rule' conjures up visions of a Maharaja moving about in his gilded finery among the fawning populace. Move with the times. No one refers to Bush's rule. They do refer to Blair's rule though. Ah, the old colonial hangover.

Anyway. Mr Aiyar does some deft framing of the question to suit his hypothesis himself. Suddenly the question becomes one the answer to which goes into the distant past and touches but fleetingly on the present. H N Bahuguna, Gundu Rao! That was then and the person incharge was Indira Gandhi, who had could hold the entire country hostage for two years.

We come to the present on a pit stop and learn that the current family head is not as bad as history would foretell

The situation under Sonia Gandhi is not as bad. Yet, see the shameful mistreatment of Sheila Dikshit. She is among the most successful Congress CMs. Yet, she was almost sacked at the behest of Ram Babu Sharma, a non-entity who managed to get an inside line to 10 Janpath.

'Almost sacked' - well you are either sacked or not sacked. What is almost sacked? How close to sacking did she come?

But it is suddenly time to time travel into the past again. We meet PVN and Sitaram Kesri. Eventually, we come to Manmohan Singh to learn that

When he was made PM, he knew what the dynasty needed from him. Sonia, never keen on politics, had taken over simply to keep the dynastic business intact for her children to inherit. The dynasty most certainly did not need an aggressive newcomer asserting himself as boss. It needed a number two to hold the fort, one who had no ambition of becoming number one.

Is Mr Aiyar Dr Singh's psychiatrist by any chance (if he has one)? Or is he a close friend whom the PM called up immediately after being sworn in and confessed his innermost thoughts? Or is this all pure conjecture? And there's more:

... one reason why the regent always goes the extra mile to accommodate the Left Front and Laloo Yadav: this buys time for Rahul and Priyanka. When L K Advani accuses him of being an invisible PM, Manmohan Singh can smilingly take this as a compliment. He knows that dynasties do not like highly visible regents.

Italics mine. So is this what Dr Singh actually thinks - that it is a compliment to be called an invisible PM? I think it is time to get some information from someone who has actually talked to the Man himself. From the article by Vir Sanghvi where he recollects a meeting he, Rajdeep Sardesai and TOI's Arindam Sengupta had with Dr Singh:

Rajdeep asked him how he felt about being described as the invisible Prime Minister by L K Advani. Did it worry him that the Opposition was intent on portraying him as a mere cipher while Sonia Gandhi remained the power behind the throne?

He seemed remarkably unperturbed. That’s just politics, he said. He recalled the fuss that had surrounded his second Budget as finance minister. The press had alleged that it had been dictated by Washington and the Opposition had moved a privilege motion against him.

Of course, he said, there was nothing to the charge but he had been extremely upset and it had showed in his responses within the House.

Later, he said, A B Vajpayee came up to him and told him not to be so upset. You are new to this game, Vajpayee said, but you’ll have to get used to it. This is what politics is like.

He had taken Vajpayee’s advice, Dr Singh said. And now, no matter what the Opposition alleged, he brushed it off as just being politics.

What about the pressures of the PM’s job, I asked. I had interviewed him during the campaign and had told him that he would probably be Prime Minister if the Congress won. At that stage, he had seemed unwilling to take the job. What had made the difference?

Dr Singh recalled the interview. But he also recalled the interview I had done with him in 1996 and reminded me of it. I had asked, “Do you want to be Prime Minister?” He had responded, “Who doesn’t want to be Prime Minister?”

Sure, it may be politics. But why is Mr Aiyar playing it? What is going on in his mind?