Manmohan changed India for the better

It is strange when somebody you have known in a completely different context suddenly becomes a powerful person.

Manmohan Singh was an old friend of my uncle’s; they had been buddies on the international development economist circuit.

 

When Dr Singh moved to Mumbai to takeover as governor of the Reserve Bank, his bungalow was only three buildings from the block of flats where I lived. So my uncle would stay with him and divide his time between the RBI bungalow and our home.

 

   When Manmohan Singh suddenly became finance minister, I was not sure how to talk to him. As it turned out, he was the same old Manmohan who had been our neighbour: open, decent, friendly and kind, especially to all of us young journalists, no matter whether we had known him in an earlier life or not.

 

   What he was attempting to do to the Indian economy was unprecedented and he was always conscious of the opposition he faced from within the party and outside. Fortunately the press (and the middle class – but never the establishment business houses which hated the reforms) became his allies and he missed no opportunity to thank us for the support.

 

   Of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing. In the early days, with the IMF putting a gun to his head, Narasimha Rao let Singh do what was needed. But as liberalisation yielded concrete results, the IMF backed off and stopped pushing. Rao stopped backing Singh with the same vigour.

 

   It was then that most of us saw a side of Manmohan Singh that only his friends had seen before: he was a sensitive emotional man who would rather quit than compromise. He resigned at least at least twice during his tenure as finance minister, always making it clear that he had never really asked for the job. Each time he was persuaded to withdraw his resignation and stay on.

 

   When the government was defeated and Rao himself was in disgrace, facing a welter of criminal cases, I wondered how Manmohan would react. I went to see him and then did a TV interview. Clearly, he had forgiven Rao for failing to back him in the later days. He made a comment that would later come back to haunt him because he later said exactly that about himself: “History will be kinder to him.”

 

   I had always thought Manmohan Singh would be a very good prime minister so I asked him on camera if he was now out of politics. Not at all, he said. He was in it for the long run.

 

   Did he want to be prime minister?

 

   He laughed. “Who doesn’t want to be Prime Minister,” he replied.

 

   For all that, I thought he would get lost in the chaos that overtook the Congress following Rao’s ouster. He was too dignified to try and create his own equation with Sonia Gandhi who eventually took over the party. But Sonia recognised his talent, admired his honesty and sought him out. Without making any effort on his own, Manmohan became a key advisor on economic matters edging out Pranab Mukherjee who had performed that task for Rajiv Gandhi. Sonia also ignored the likes of Arjun Singh who claimed to be her loyalists and who loathed Manmohan Singh.

 

   Matters came to a head when the Congress-led opposition defeated the Vajpayee government in a no-confidence motion. The Congress was invited to form a new coalition government and Sonia decided that Manmohan Singh would be prime minister.

 

   This was not going to be a popular decision with her party or the rest of the allies so she kept quiet about it. She confided only in a few key aides and in President KR Narayanan. (If you want the full story of this neglected chapter of our history, it is in my memoir A Rude Life.)

 

"All too often the press judged Manmohan only on those last two years in office. We forgot what a great job he did as prime minister for eight years."

   Of course the Congress never got to form the government because Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh sabotaged opposition unity even trying to do a deal with LK Advani. And so nothing came of Manmohan Singh’s Prime Ministerial appointment.

 

   In 2004 during the election campaign when it looked like the BJP would be defeated and the Congress would lead a coalition, I interviewed Manmohan Singh again. Did he realise, I asked, that he might well be prime minister in a couple of weeks time? He knew that I knew the background and yet he also knew that he could not say anything. He dodged the question.

 

   When Manmohan did become Prime Minister most of us were delighted. He took on the job in all humility, believing (he told me) that the coalition would not last more than a year. So he moved swiftly, not just on the economic front but also on social issues. In his speeches he would talk about how attempts had been made to divide the country; about how India was one; and about how we should all work together. He referred not just to people of different religions but also to the division between rich and poor. Like Sonia Gandhi, he believed that the benefits of liberalisation had not fully penetrated to the poor.

 

   UPA 1 was, in most respects, a dream success. It will be hard to find any example of a government that was so transparent, so willing to work with allies and so respectful of the media’s right to criticise it. It was not that Manmohan Singh enjoyed criticism. In private he would complain bitterly about critical articles and would be hurt by any attacks on his performance. But he recognised that we lived in a free society.

 

   As we all know, the UPA won a second term with an enhanced majority and then, things began to go wrong. Historians will figure out what it was that caused the collapse but I have some theories.

 

   First: when Manmohan Singh threatened to resign if the Congress did not back the India-US nuclear deal, Sonia was advised to let him go. Even if the Congress managed to win the same number of seats in parliament at the next election, the left would withdraw support if Manmohan Singh was going to Prime Minister. Why not nominate Pranab Mukherjee, who the left loved, and who was dying for the job? Sonia rejected this advice. She backed Manmohan.

 

   When it turned out that the Congress won many more seats and did not need the left, Manmohan was safe. But I think that the people close to Manmohan told him that the election was a personal victory and he now had the clout to tell the rest of the Congress to take a flying jump.

 

   In fact, he had no such clout. He had never managed the political side of things because Sonia had been around to handle the party and the allies. When she fell ill and went to abroad for treatment, Manmohan did not know quite what to do.

 

   And then came the scams. Many of them were bogus or at the very least, exaggerated because of a publicity hungry CAG but Sonia made it worse by sacking anyone who was accused of any impropriety by the press. In the public mind this suggested the allegation was valid and the person who resigned was guilty.

 

   It did not help that the electronic media promoted Anna Hazare and his so-called India against Corruption movement with its RSS supplied crowds, not realising the whole thing was no more than a ploy to bring Arvind Kejriwal to power.

 

   Faced with this onslaught, Manmohan crumbled. Always a sensitive and decent man, he felt he was being unfairly persecuted. He was too much of a liberal to try and act against the media, but he retreated into a shell and stopped providing the kind of leadership the country needed. It was this leadership vacuum that contributed to the search for a strong leader and eventually, to the rise of Narendra Modi.

 

   All too often the press judged Manmohan only on those last two years in office. We forgot what a great job he did as prime minister for eight years. We forgot also that the prosperity the middle class now enjoys is a consequence of Manmohan ‘s reforms. The welfare benefits that the poor now receive began with UPA 1.

 

   In the end, Manmohan changed India for the better. He did more than any prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to transform our country with kindness, honesty, compassion, and integrity.

 

   His passing is a national tragedy.