Manmohan Singh: Understated politician who could pull off impossible tasks

He ran a coalition, managing Congressmen who both considered themselves senior to him and swore by another power centre

After he ceased being finance minister in 1996, friends advised Manmohan Singh to not get lost in the value-free world of Congress politics, and to nurse his support base among those who admired him for spearheading economic reforms.

 

Singh’s response, stated with his shy smile, was: “But I am in politics.” That was usually met with sceptical silence, as though his listeners didn’t see him that way at all.

 

The fact is, baldly stated, Manmohan Singh was a politician, though he avoided admitting this. What is more, he was a skilled negotiator. Few remember that it was Manmohan Singh who was sent to work out an alliance between the Congress and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir after the state elections there in 2002. Mindful of how important it was to provide stability to this sensitive border state, and making sure the government was a truly representative one, Singh managed the impossible: A rotating chief ministership between the Congress led by Ghulam Nabi Azad and PDP led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. The relationship unraveled six months ahead of the Assembly elections in 2008. But by acting as an honest broker, he managed to put in place an arrangement that won the confidence of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. It was the first and, mostly successful, experiment with a rotating chief ministership.

 

 

This quality came in handy when Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati called him to congratulate him after the 2009 Lok Sabha victory. He won her over by referring to her as “my younger sister”. From anyone else, it might have sounded cheesy. From Singh, it was the equivalent of a garland: An open-minded embrace of the socially deprived. Similarly, it was healthy pragmatism on the part of the Samajwadi Party, but also Singh’s reaching out to the SP leaders, that saved his government from falling in the late summer of 2008. The two parties were bitter enemies: They came together for Manmohan Singh.

 

Singh was a politician with apparently impossible tasks: He had to run a coalition; he had a gaggle of Congressmen who considered themselves senior to him in the party and better politicians; and he knew – as did everyone else – that the final veto on any decision lay, not with him, but with the lady who lived 2 km down the road.

 

So he made compromises, however unattractive, having to defend, at one stage, retaining a minister who had been charged with murder. In a reshuffle, he replaced the petroleum minister with someone who had proven connections with a company in the petroleum business. His communications minister’s brother ran a media business that was regulated, in part, by the communications ministry.

 

But there were things he refused to countenance: When a minister convicted of graft had to bow out of office and there was coalition pressure on him to take him back, Singh stood firm.

 

And yet, the Congress party always treated Sonia Gandhi as the boss, not the Prime Minister. Various people would tell the Prime Minister’s Office to do this or the other, and add, importantly: “Madam se baat ho gayi hai (we’ve talked to madam)”. The states paid little attention to the Centre. Home minister Shivraj Patil confessed in Parliament in both cases – of the Act passed by the Punjab Assembly annulling previous water-sharing promises with Haryana, and the Manipur government lifting of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in some areas – that the state governments had acted contrary to the advice given by the Centre. As Prime Minister, Singh had to put up with this.

 

His home minister declared repeatedly that he held office so long as he enjoyed the confidence of the Congress president – forgetting, for a moment, the Constitution of India, where it says ministers are appointed at the pleasure of the President of India, and on the advice of the Prime Minister.

 

"You see, you must understand one thing. I have come to terms with this. There cannot be two centres of power. That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party," former media advisor to Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru, quotes the prime minister as telling him in his book, The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh.

 

But for all that, it wasn’t wise to underestimate Manmohan Singh. There was more to him than he let on. There was the case of a junior minister who, during the illness of a senior colleague, was asked to handle the portfolio. When newspapers reported that the said minister was so elated at his ‘elevation’ that he had been holding parties to celebrate, forgetting he was just a stand-in for his comrade lying in a coma in the hospital, the Prime Minister quietly informed the President that he would handle the portfolio himself. It was the shortest secondment ever.

 

And during the crucial debate on his government’s confidence motion in July 2008, he gave as good as he got: Advising the leader of the Opposition in the House to change his astrologer who had so often forecast the fall of the government, and asking what the Vajpayee government thought it had been doing when it sent its minister to escort terrorists to freedom in Kandahar.

 

Then, on March 23, 2011, when the issue of cash for votes was being discussed in the Lok Sabha and Manmohan Singh was answering the questions of the Opposition, the leader of Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, had said sarcastically to him, "Tu idhar udhar kee na baat kar, ye bata ki kaaravaan kyon luta, mujhe rahajanon se gila nahin, teri rahabaree ka savaal hai."

 

To which Manmohan Singh replied, "Maana ke teri deed ke kaabil nahin hoon main, tu mera shauk to dekh, mera intazaar to dekh." After this, Sushma Swaraj and the entire Opposition was seen smiling.

 

The man challenged every notion you might have held of a successful Prime Minister. He was not known for oratory. He never exuded a sense of power or authority. He avoided opportunities to fill the airwaves with soundbites. And his pictures at summit meetings show others smiling at the cameras or making conversation, while he looks preoccupied with some distant thought. And yet, he is the Prime Minister who will be mourned deeply for his wisdom, his intellect and his simplicity.