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India’s slowdown made international headlines last week when the economy recorded its slowest growth in a decade. This time our Finance Minister did not blame Greece but he did absolve himself and his lousy budget of responsibility by blaming the Eurozone crisis. And, with the reckless optimism he has exhibited every time the economic slowdown is mentioned, he said that he thought the worst was over. Clearly, North Block exists in a stratosphere so rarefied that it will not notice India’s spiral into deepening gloom until we hit rock bottom.
The Finance Minister is, of course, to be blamed for making budgets and economic policies that have driven away investors and brought back memories of the licence raj but the man who is really to blame must now either accept responsibility or resign. That man is the Prime Minister. He has behaved, since the government won re-election in 2009 like the ghost of his former self. Wraithlike and smiling wanly, he has wandered through the corridors of power as if he were not really there. So a junior minister, Jairam Ramesh, was allowed to begin the process of taking the Indian economy down by stopping huge infrastructure projects after investments worth thousands of crore rupees had already been made. Why did the Prime Minister not stop the Ministry of Environment from being turned into a secret instrument for a new licence raj?
Why did he not speak up when the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India came up with his first set of laughable figures for the telecommunications ‘scam’? When more sensible auditing is done, it will become clear that the loss was nowhere near the Rs 176,000 crores that CAG came up with but because the Prime Minister refused to defend his government at the outset, the government’s personal auditor took to making all his reports public on national television. His reports have all contained statistics that are as fanciful as the ones he produced for the ‘2G scam’ but not once has the Prime Minister spoken up. On the supposed ‘windfall’ given to private companies in the sale of coal assets, the figures are not just untrue but hilarious as has been ably pointed out in this newspaper by Surjit Bhalla. But, the Prime Minister said nothing.
If he had dared to speak up from the start, we may not have reached this low point. His silence has been interpreted by everyone from government auditors and judges to social activists as a sign of such weakness that they have taken to dictating government policies. It is not the business of social activists and judges to make policy but they have felt emboldened to do this because of the Prime Minister’s mysterious silences.
Last week we finally heard Dr Manmohan Singh speak up when Anna’s teammates, those ultimate paragons of probity, charged him with being personally corrupt. And, even then what we heard from the Prime Minister was not an angry rebuttal but a sad, little whine. He offered to resign from public life if the charges against him could be proved. These are not the words of a leader but the words of a defendant in the dock. What India has needed, time and time again since 2009, was a leader and at no stage has the Prime Minister shown that he is that leader. In his last term in office we saw a very different man. Someone who stood up for what he believed was right for India and risked the fall of his government rather than succumb to communist blackmail over the nuclear deal he signed with the United States.
Where did that man go? What happened in 2009 that forced the Prime Minister to behave more and more like the backroom bureaucrat he once used to be? Was he told that he was only a stopgap for someone else? Was he told he must avoid being too much of a leader?The questions have become irrelevant today because the damage has been done and is probably irreversible.
It is only a matter of time before we slide back into that socialist era when officials controlled the Indian economy, private enterprise was considered a crime and everything from milk and bread to gas cylinders and telephones were always in short supply. When this happens the man who will be held responsible will be the Prime Minister because it is his fault.
The political lesson that can be learned from the celebrated rise and ignominious fall of Dr Manmohan Singh is that India cannot be led by prime ministers who are prime ministers by appointment. Sonia Gandhi must accept that her experiment in enjoying political power without a modicum of accountability may have worked the first time but has failed miserably this time around. And, India is paying the price.
India needs a prime minister - Indian Express
The Finance Minister is, of course, to be blamed for making budgets and economic policies that have driven away investors and brought back memories of the licence raj but the man who is really to blame must now either accept responsibility or resign. That man is the Prime Minister. He has behaved, since the government won re-election in 2009 like the ghost of his former self. Wraithlike and smiling wanly, he has wandered through the corridors of power as if he were not really there. So a junior minister, Jairam Ramesh, was allowed to begin the process of taking the Indian economy down by stopping huge infrastructure projects after investments worth thousands of crore rupees had already been made. Why did the Prime Minister not stop the Ministry of Environment from being turned into a secret instrument for a new licence raj?
Why did he not speak up when the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India came up with his first set of laughable figures for the telecommunications ‘scam’? When more sensible auditing is done, it will become clear that the loss was nowhere near the Rs 176,000 crores that CAG came up with but because the Prime Minister refused to defend his government at the outset, the government’s personal auditor took to making all his reports public on national television. His reports have all contained statistics that are as fanciful as the ones he produced for the ‘2G scam’ but not once has the Prime Minister spoken up. On the supposed ‘windfall’ given to private companies in the sale of coal assets, the figures are not just untrue but hilarious as has been ably pointed out in this newspaper by Surjit Bhalla. But, the Prime Minister said nothing.
If he had dared to speak up from the start, we may not have reached this low point. His silence has been interpreted by everyone from government auditors and judges to social activists as a sign of such weakness that they have taken to dictating government policies. It is not the business of social activists and judges to make policy but they have felt emboldened to do this because of the Prime Minister’s mysterious silences.
Last week we finally heard Dr Manmohan Singh speak up when Anna’s teammates, those ultimate paragons of probity, charged him with being personally corrupt. And, even then what we heard from the Prime Minister was not an angry rebuttal but a sad, little whine. He offered to resign from public life if the charges against him could be proved. These are not the words of a leader but the words of a defendant in the dock. What India has needed, time and time again since 2009, was a leader and at no stage has the Prime Minister shown that he is that leader. In his last term in office we saw a very different man. Someone who stood up for what he believed was right for India and risked the fall of his government rather than succumb to communist blackmail over the nuclear deal he signed with the United States.
Where did that man go? What happened in 2009 that forced the Prime Minister to behave more and more like the backroom bureaucrat he once used to be? Was he told that he was only a stopgap for someone else? Was he told he must avoid being too much of a leader?The questions have become irrelevant today because the damage has been done and is probably irreversible.
It is only a matter of time before we slide back into that socialist era when officials controlled the Indian economy, private enterprise was considered a crime and everything from milk and bread to gas cylinders and telephones were always in short supply. When this happens the man who will be held responsible will be the Prime Minister because it is his fault.
The political lesson that can be learned from the celebrated rise and ignominious fall of Dr Manmohan Singh is that India cannot be led by prime ministers who are prime ministers by appointment. Sonia Gandhi must accept that her experiment in enjoying political power without a modicum of accountability may have worked the first time but has failed miserably this time around. And, India is paying the price.
India needs a prime minister - Indian Express
