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In most countries, what a Prime Minister says at a press conference makes headlines. In India, that the reticent Manmohan Singh is holding a press conference at all, is news.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to meet media on friday and is likely to hard sell the achievements of the UPA government in the last decade.
Inflation, economic growth is likely to be on top of the agenda as the PM addresses the media today.
Inflation, economic growth is likely to be on top of the agenda as the PM addresses the media today.
The timing of the press interaction has evoked wide interest as it comes only a few months before the United Progressive Alliance government seeks re-election, amid a growing clamour that the Congress name a candidate for PM in the run-up to the elections. That candidate is unlikely to be Singh.
The PM does address journalists when he travels abroad but is otherwise notoriously media-shy, uncomfortable in large press gaggles. This news conference will be Singh’s only second such interaction in his second term as PM (since May 2009), though he has met five editors and a group of television editors once each. He addressed only one press conference in his first term (2004-09). The All-India Congress Committee session is on January 17 and is certain to see party workers clamour for formally naming Rahul Gandhi the PM candidate. Another PM might have cavilled at being undermined when he holds India’s most important job. Singh, however, had earlier endorsed Gandhi as PM and added, for good measure, that he would be happy to serve under him.
On Monday, party senior and finance minister P Chidambaram suggested the Congress project its PM candidate for the coming general elections.
“In my view, the party (Congress) should project a person as the leader of the party who will become prime minister if the party forms the government. That is my view but it is for the party to decide,” he told a television channel. Party chief Sonia Gandhi, on the day of the recent assembly poll results, had said the party would announce its PM candidate at an appropriate time.
Given how little Manmohan Singh speaks to the press, the announcement of a press conference was seen as so unusual that it sparked improbable rumours that he might be announcing his resignation. However, the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday dismissed as speculation the reports suggesting that Singh might quit ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. The UPA government has been facing criticism on account of “policy paralysis”, corruption, price rise and other issues. Singh is expected to be posed questions on all these issues at the conference.
Lately, he has been meeting criticism of his government gently but robustly. At the Hindustan Times summit in the first week of October, he urged India not to judge the 10-year regime too harshly.
Conceding mistakes might have been made, Singh said: “Any sudden acceleration of growth, as we saw in the period 2004-08, creates imbalances that can contribute to inflation. Such growth can also create opportunities for personal enrichment and that distorts governance and creates social resentment. Rising economic growth has helped to liberate millions of Indians from chronic poverty, reducing the incidence of poverty but it has also widened social and economic inequalities. Our strategy of inclusive growth has sought to blunt the edge of such disparities.”
February 1, 2006
* In his first interaction with journalists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to defend himself from the Oppositions’ criticism which described him as the “weakest” prime minister ever. Singh had then said, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I have not done anything to deserve such epithets. I should be judged not by what Mr [L K] Advani says but what I do.”
* Who is more powerful, the Prime Minister’s Office or the Congress President’s office, was the other issue on which journalists sough Singh’s clarification. The PM had said Sonia Gandhi had an influence on his government. This, he had added, was not a matter of weakness but a source of strength for him and his government.
* Quote to remember: “Rome was not built in a day”: When his attention was sought on energy situation, infrastructure and fiscal positions of state and the Centre.
May 24, 2010
* Singh was questioned by journalists on when he was retiring. Singh had responded by saying that there was no question of his retiring, until he had completed the work which had been handed over to him.
* The PM had accepted that he had failed to do much in his first year in office, during UPA’s second term.
* Singh had hoped that the persisting inflation will cool. And he saw growth in 2010-11 rising to 8.5%.
* Quote to remember: "I would be the first person to admit that we could have done more”
