Go well, Dr Manmohan Singh; not just history but the present is kinder to you

On August 7 last year, as a heated debate progressed in Rajya Sabha over the Delhi Services Bill, former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was quietly wheeled into the Upper House.

The Congress had issued a three-line whip to all its MPs, directing them to be present in the Rajya Sabha to vote against the Bill.

Singh, confined to a wheelchair, abided though no one would have grudged him for not being present to vote against a legislation that was certain to pass. He sat patiently through the acrimonious discussion because his duty to Parliament and to his party demanded so and left Parliament premises only after voting on the Bill concluded at around 9.50 PM.

The Bill, of course, was passed but it was Singh’s presence in the House and not the Narendra Modi government’s legislative victory that became the talking point that night. The loudest applause for the former Prime Minister came from the Aam Aadmi Party, whose government in Delhi was to lose more powers with the Bill’s enactment.

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Uncharitable appraisal

Singh could have justifiably taken a dig at the AAP, an outfit that, in more ways than one, contributed enormously to the grossly uncharitable appraisal of him during the final years of the UPA-II government, but he did not.

Scoring petty political points and passing mean jibes had never been part of his rhetorical arsenal for, whenever he spoke, be it as an Opposition leader or through the decade of his premiership, he did so firmly but always politely.

Six months later, when he retired as a member of the Rajya Sabha after 33 long years, Singh came in for high praise from an even more unlikely quarter.

Modi, who, along with several other leading lights of the BJP, had pilloried his predecessor from 2004 to 2014 and even after the fall of the UPA regime with vile invectives, hailed Singh for his “immense contributions” to the country and as “one of few leaders whose contributions to democracy will always be talked about”.

Courteous to a fault, deeply loyal

Soft-spoken, courteous to a fault, deeply loyal to his party – the Congress – and an economist-politician whose almost prescient understanding of India’s economic challenges gave the country’s economic policy a new direction after Nehruvian socialism had run its course, Singh deserved these laurels from Modi – and everyone else – more than any of his contemporaries or juniors.

That the last two decades of his life, instead, mostly brought him ridicule from petty-minded rivals is a sad commentary of how perverse and repulsive India’s political discourse has become in the last two decades.

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Born in Gah village of undivided Punjab (now in Pakistan) on September 26, 1932, Singh had moved to India with his family after Partition. He had seen the hardships of Partition and poverty but his academic brilliance had held him in good stead throughout his youth.

He earned a Master’s degree in Economics from Panjab University, Chandigarh, and then went on to study at the prestigious universities of Cambridge and Oxford, obtaining a doctorate from the latter.

Brilliant career

Singh often acknowledged that his higher education abroad despite his modest financial background and not having any powerful patron was singularly because of the scholarships that the Government of India provided to meritorious students back then.

The political elite who today want the country to believe that excellence began to be nurtured in the country only after 2014 or that people who came to India from Pakistan after Partition were permanently consigned to a life in penury and strife, may learn a thing or two from Singh’s remarkable life.

One of the earliest lateral entrants in India’s administrative framework, Singh served in numerous high-ranking positions in government – beginning in the late 1960s as advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and subsequently in roles such as Chief Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry, RBI Governor and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission – before PV Narasimha Rao roped him in as the Finance Minister who gave India its New Economic Policy in 1991.

An India before 2014

Singh’s Budget Speech of 1991 can still give goosebumps to those who wish to know that an India, perhaps flawed but always resilient, existed before 2014 too.

“I do not minimise the difficulties that lie ahead on the long and arduous journey on which we have embarked. But as Victor Hugo once said, 'No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come'. I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now wide awake. We shall prevail. We shall overcome”.

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Volumes have been written – and will continue to be written – about the liberalisation of India’s economy by Singh and the foundations it laid for the country’s economic growth in the years to follow.

Rare modesty

What may seem ironic to many today is that none of these accolades ever came from Singh himself, who continued to ascribe most praise to Rao’s staunch support, despite the disapproval of many Congress stalwarts of the day, or to the collective wisdom of the Congress and its government.

It was this modesty that stayed with Singh all through his years in public service. After he demitted office as Prime Minister, his official letterhead introduced him merely as a Member of Parliament.

In any of his correspondence on issues of economic policy, he described himself simply as a ‘student of economics’.

Perhaps, it was also this unassuming personality, visibly scrapped of any grandstanding and personal ambition, which made Singh so close a confidante of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi that when she refused India’s premiership in 2004, she chose him for the role over any other party stalwart, including Pranab Mukherjee.

Singh-Sonia stewardship

The Singh-Sonia stewardship of the UPA regime became an instant source of derision by the Congress’s rivals, particularly the BJP. Sonia’s role as Chairperson of the UPA and of the powerful National Advisory Council (NAC), which gave regular social sector policy prescriptions to the government, was likened to that of a ‘super PM’, the power behind the throne or the remote control of the government, and Singh, being the disciplined party loyalist, made no effort to decisively curb such impression from gaining currency in public discourse.

Yet, those who worked within his government or in the Congress in that tumultuous decade maintain that while Singh was always courteous to Sonia and accommodative of any diktats that came from her NAC, he also stood his ground on critical matters he felt needed to be dealt with his way.

The high-point of Singh’s premiership, of course, was his strident steering of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal during the UPA-I era despite Sonia’s initial disapproval for it owing to the obstinate resistance to the deal from the Left Front, whose outside support was crucial for the survival of the coalition government.

Much to the Congress’s own surprise, Singh showed that when the time came, he could be as cunning a political negotiator as they come. While the Congress’s troubleshooters and floor managers were busy crunching numbers for the trust vote over the deal, Singh almost single-handedly yet quietly secured the support of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in the Lok Sabha despite the widely known trust deficit between Sonia and the SP chief.

Right to Information Act

While Singh’s manoeuvring of the Indo-US agreement – also viewed by many as India’s first real departure from Nehruvian-era non-alignment to a visibly pro-US tilt – is widely acknowledged, a little known instance of the then PM standing his ground against an assertive Sonia related to the issue of amending the Right to Information (RTI) Act, another flagship legislation of the UPA days.

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Sonia had been particularly proud of the RTI rollout and she often described it at the time as “one of the most efficient pieces of legislation that has made governments more responsive”.

However, soon after the UPA coalition was re-elected for a consecutive term with Singh returning as PM in 2009, demands for amending the Act and diluting several of its provisions had begun to pour in from various quarters. The final push for diluting the RTI came from no less than the then Chief Justice of India, KG Balakrishnan, who ostensibly wanted the PM’s intervention to keep the higher judiciary out of the Act’s purview.

Dilution of RTI Act

In November 2009, Sonia wrote to Singh arguing that instead of giving in to calls for diluting the Act, efforts should be made to further strengthen its implementation. “In my opinion, there is no need for changes or amendments”, Sonia wrote to Singh on November 10, 2009.

The PM, however, wrote back to Sonia on December 24, 2009, canvassing the merits of some dilution in the Act and hinting that the absolute transparency that the legislation in its original form promised could create problems in the future as “there are some issues relating to cabinet papers and internal discussions” being made public under the RTI.

The Act was eventually amended but not before Singh’s fears came true. Coupled with scandalous ‘disclosures’ of multiple “scams” by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) and the recurring agitations by the likes of Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Baba Ramdev, the UPA-II regime also fell victim to the transparency bug that the RTI Act had unleashed, with controversial revelations being made at regular intervals in response to RTI applications.

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The latter half of Singh’s tenure was marred by one scandal after another in quick succession – alleged scams in the organising of the Commonwealth Games, allocation of 2G Spectrum, allocation of coal blocks, et al.

2G scam and coalition dharma

‘Coalition dharma’ swiftly eroded Singh’s credibility though no allegation of financial impropriety was ever made on his person. By the time he put his foot down to force then Telecom Minister A Raja’s resignation from the cabinet over the 2G scam, it was too late.

In November 2010, while Singh was leaving for Seoul to attend a G20 summit, he reportedly conveyed to Sonia that if he doesn’t have Raja’s resignation from the cabinet upon his return to New Delhi, he would have no choice but to sack him.

Raja, a DMK MP, submitted his resignation before Singh returned from Seoul but the damage to UPA’s credibility was already done, though it is a different matter that in 2017, Raja and all others accused in the 2G scam were acquitted by a Delhi court and the Modi government never challenged the acquittal.

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In many ways, Singh was undone not just by the allegations of corruption made against his cabinet colleagues by his political rivals, the CAG and the Anna Hazare coterie, but also by the Congress leadership he always stood so firmly loyal, and by his own refusal to get into a slanging match with his rivals.

'Weakest' PM?

The BJP was spending all its energy showing up Singh as a ‘lame duck’ PM, remote controlled by Sonia. It was at this time that Rahul Gandhi worsened matters with his robust disapproval of an ordinance (meant to safeguard convicted politicians against being disqualified from holding public office or contesting polls) while Singh was away to the US for a crucial bilateral meeting.

Though Rahul reportedly met Singh and “apologised” for his misconduct later – ostensibly after being prodded by an equally upset Sonia – the episode had allowed the BJP’s LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley to dub Singh as the “weakest Prime Minister” the country has ever had.

BJP leaders like Modi, then the Gujarat CM, took their cue from Advani and began pillorying Singh on a daily basis. Modi would often call the PM 'Maunmohan Singh (Silent Singh)', while Congress leaders and UPA ministers, too busy saving their own skin, made only perfunctory attempts to defend their Prime Minister.

If Singh was rattled by this blitzkrieg, he certainly never showed so in public. Instead, as global recession and spiralling prices of crude oil began adversely impacting India’s economy while retail inflation and agrarian distress set in domestically, he chose to focus on steering the country through these crises.

An ungrateful nation

An ungrateful nation, in the grip of euphoric claims of second independence (remember Anna Hazare being positioned as a fusion incarnation of Mahatma Gandhi and JP?) and tall promises of vikas (development), wasn’t impressed.

As the UPA was voted out and the Congress fell to its lowest ever tally in 2004, Singh gradually withdrew from public life, beset by ill-health and, perhaps, disillusioned with how his premiership ended.

Yet, in the few appearances he made in Parliament over the next couple of years, he showed a dignified grace devoid of any rancour and, when the need arose, also the glimpse of a polite and pithy but impactful orator that the nation, unfortunately, didn’t get to see through his decade-long premiership.

Singh’s “organised loot and legalised plunder” jibe at Modi over the demonetisation misadventure remains the most quotable quote to come from Parliament in the past decade.

A kinder history

In one of his rare press conferences after demitting office, Singh also scorched Modi without once raising his voice by merely stating a fact – that he himself had never shied away from facing the media even through the toughest days of the UPA regime.

What must, however, haunt all those who crucified Singh while he was alive is the reply he gave to a journalist in his last press conference as Prime Minister in January 2014.

“I do not believe that I have been a weak Prime Minister. I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter the Opposition in Parliament.”

Go well, Dr Singh. Not just history but the present shall be kinder to you. Your fiercest adversaries have ensured that by their own actions.