The rut that the brilliant Oxbridge-trained economist Manmohan Singh has let his second term as Indian prime minister descend into defies belief.
At a press conference last month marking the end of the first year of his second term as prime minister of the Congress party-lead UPA-II government, Singh showed surprising and unappealing impatience with the idea of leaving any kind of a legacy behind. The prime minister said he had been given a job to do, and had had no intention of retiring until he had done it, although he would make a place for Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi—if the party so desired.
Singh gave his government six out of ten for its performance in the first year of his first term, but he was reluctant to grade himself this time. India’s best-known contemporary historian, Ramchandra Guha, was more forthcoming, suggesting 5, while prominent economist Bibek Debroy, based on the government’s failure to implement various policy programmes, was more scathing, giving the Singh government a lowly1.6 out of 10.
The results of the government’s shortcomings are being felt across the country and will come back to haunt this administration.
Food inflation is currently raging at about 17 percent, having touched 11-year highs earlier this year. Despite mountains of grain reportedly being held in government granaries, corrupt officials are believed to have created market shortages in order to reap the profits. Agriculture and Food Minister Sharad Pawar, for example, has been held largely accountable by critics for surging prices after publicly predicting food shortages, remarks that many felt benefited commodity speculators. There’s a strong case for removing Pawar, but because the Congress and the party Pawar leads, the NCP, run the Maharashtra coalition government (of which Bombay, the country’s greatest milch cow, is the capital) Singh apparently sees himself as powerless to remove him.
Yet when it has suited Singh, such as with his pro-Americanism, he has asserted himself to the point of putting his premiership on the line. In 2008, he threatened to resign if the Parliament didn’t approve the Indo-US nuclear deal (which has since, in reality, brought general or civil nuclear ties with the United States no closer, although it did open the gates for Russian and French reactors and uranium fuel). As a result, in an effort to placate Singh, the Congress ditched its nuclear deal-opposing Left allies, and is said to have leaned on regional politicians such as Mulayam Singh Yadav with the prospect of anti-corruption proceedings to secure their support for the agreement.
So why has this toughness not been evident on food inflation? Singh is undoubtedly weaker in his second term than in his first, not least because his erstwhile Left allies-cum-opponents have been replaced by his own party’s ministers, who owe their offices and thus their loyalties solely to Sonia Gandhi. Congress insiders sadly also say now that it’s open season for corruption, with officials wanting to make the most of the second term. Singh, who values his nominal premiership above all else, has no interest in rocking the boat, a position made easier to maintain by the fragmented, leaderless and disoriented opposition, which has no alternative vision to present to the nation.
The terms that Sonia Gandhi proposed and Manmohan Singh accepted when he was appointed in 2004 was that she was to be in charge of political decisions and critical policy-making related to poverty management, social sector spending and related areas, while he was to run the government and the bureaucracy and could handle foreign policy, one of the lowliest concerns of India’s ruling class.
There’s no doubt that Gandhi respects Singh’s personal integrity, but she also wanted a non-political prime minister to make the succession easier for Rahul. There were, of course, worthier candidates than Singh for the post, chief of them Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. But Sonia trusted Singh at his word that he was an ‘accidental politician.’
Yet nations as profoundly multi-layered and complex as India can’t be governed on such compacts and divisions of labour between two individuals as these (one is, after all, a politician who isn’t quite Indian, while the other is an Indian who’s not quite a politician).
The shortcomings of the current arrangement are manifesting themselves in the socio-political divides that are damaging the country.
For example, Maoist violence based on tribal discontent at evictions from mineral-rich ancestral lands has claimed nearly 300 civilians and troopers in the past couple of months. Meanwhile, the country’s middle class demand-lead growth of over 7 percent, which the Singh government unfairly claims credit for, has not included the poor, whose estimates have been so contemptuously fudged by the government that their numbers could range from anywhere between 40 to over 70 percent of India’s population.
Naturally, for such a socially, economically and politically fractured nation to carry great power ambitions is illusory, which is why it makes it easier for China and its cohort Pakistan to contain India in South Asia. China has supported Pakistan’s nuclear stance, and has been accused by many within India of encouraging Pakistani terrorism against India with a view to inflicting a ‘thousand cuts’ to cripple its growth and Balkanize it.
On his frequent foreign trips, Singh has been made to realize that while the world accepts and appreciates that India’s ‘rise’ will be ‘peaceful’ (in contrast with China’s), that rise won’t materialize unless the nation strengthens and consolidates itself internally.
After recently attending summit meetings in the United States and Brazil, Singh brought that message back to India, without realizing the irony that both he and Sonia Gandhi were largely responsible for the perilous internal situation, and that it would only become worse unless he stepped up and took charge. After all, the only time India has demonstrated international strength above its weight class has been when it has been led by fired-up leaders such as Nehru, Indira Gandhi and A.B.Vajpayee. All drew on their internal strengths, rather than paying court to the United States, a move by Singh that has been undercut by the fact that the Obama administration is somewhat less friendly than the administration of George W. Bush. Obama is apparently fond of Singh and likes India. But India lacks the critical internal strengths necessary to become indispensable in great power politics.
Ultimately, for all the esteem that Singh’s academic qualifications command around the world, they don’t translate into political weight, because it’s widely recognized that Sonia Gandhi wields the most power in India’s hugely fragmented political system. The Union cabinet has been meaningfully reshuffled only once, and that in Singh’s first term.
And meanwhile, even the prime minister’s relative independence in foreign policy making has been curtailed after he controversially pledged in Sharm-el-Sheikh to examine Pakistani allegations of India’s involvement in restive Balochistan. Under pressure from the Congress, Singh had to recant on his pledge in Parliament, surely his worst political moment so far. Since then, he has become withdrawn, undermining his premiership still further.
The real tragedy for India is that even as leaderless India grows, the time lost for much-needed reform will continue to complicate and confound the country’s efforts to rise to join the league of great powers.