PM vs Snow White’s seven dwarfs

This column over the years has poked fun at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. So it is ironic that today it is advocating the prime minister’s cause and is politely asking his Congress party to get the hell off his back and let him try and fix the goddamned economy. Yes. Word from Delhi is that now that Pranab Mukherjee is getting ready to tend to the Mughal Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhawan, the party is putting pressure on the prime minister to appoint a “political” finance minister, and perhaps as early as September.

The party — and particularly its boss — has different ideas, all mainly geared towards Rahul Gandhi’s eventual levitation to the throne. It wants a finance minister who, as P Chidambaram did in 2008 when he waived Rs60,000 crore of farmers’ loans, will throw government book-keeping to the wind. It does not matter if captains of industry whine about how NREGS spoiled rural labour; nor does the prohibitive cost of the proposed food security bill matter. What matters is building up voter goodwill for the next parliamentary elections. Thus Sonia Gandhi wants to spend the remainder of her political capital during the UPA-2’s final two years, through a finance minister with an obedience that is Pavlovian.

The only problem is Manmohan Singh, who, as should be evident by now, wants to run the finance ministry himself, with the help of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, C Rangarajan and Kaushik Basu (and maybe with help from Raghuram Rajan, currently at the University of Chicago). This ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem for Sonia Gandhi because the prime minister has over the years been a mild-mannered man who would rather drop a matter (like FDI in retail) than force a confrontation. But times have changed. In the recent past, whenever Sonia’s minions have dropped a hint for the prime minister to retire, mostly through calls to Rahul to take over government, Manmohan Singh has conveniently been deaf to their chorus. In the backroom struggle over who would go to Rashtrapati Bhawan, Manmohan Singh waited for the right moment and threw his weight behind Pranab Mukherjee (whose selection, it is clear, was the result of a cornered Sonia Gandhi being presented with a fait accompli). And with the end of his tenure now in sight, Manmohan Singh is going to be less concerned with Rahul’s future and more concerned with his own legacy.

For instance, if the party wanted another massive populist outlay that makes little accounting sense (like the food security bill), you can bet that the prime minister, who in eight years has picked up a trick or two, would stall it in the best traditions of death-by-committee: through an experts’ committee, a cabinet committee, a group of ministers committee, a parliamentary standing committee, and so on. This is Sonia’s greatest fear: an unaccommodating finance ministry when she needs it most.

You could argue that what India requires is not a bunch of reformist technocrats steering India’s economy but a political person who can steer the necessary financial measures through what is not only a polarised polity, but one that comprises parties that have tasted blood and are looking to further mortally wound the Congress party till it falls. That argument sounds like crap.

There is no one in the Congress who has any goodwill across his party (other than his immediate circle of acolytes), much less outside it. Pray tell, what political will can P Chidambaram or Jairam Ramesh or Anand Sharma or Kamal Nath or Sushil Shinde or AK Antony or Digvijay Singh summon to implement policy measures? And who among even the UPA-2 allies will give any of these seven political dwarfs the time of day?

Having said that, you can’t bet that Manmohan Singh will pull off a major policy initiative — like a “controlled” decontrol of petrochemical subsidies — in the way that he got the controversy-ridden Indo-US nuclear deal approved by Parliament. As mentioned earlier, various political parties see their historic moment inching closer and closer, and several major parties propping up UPA-2, including the Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party, have an advantage in early parliamentary elections. The only reason these parties would want to help the prime minister is if he obliges them with fiscal recklessness in their states; but that is the very thing he is trying to bring under control (their philosophy of governance is diametrically opposed to his). All that seems realistic at this juncture is that Manmohan Singh spends the remaining years trying to talk up the markets, and even that will eventually lose its efficacy.

It would seem that for India’s economy, the best way forward is to have immediate parliamentary elections and a new government. But that will not happen, so there is no point wishing for it. It is preferable that Manmohan Singh hold charge of the finance ministry for the remainder of the UPA-2’s term. The alternative would be for one of Snow White’s seven dwarves to take over the finance ministry. Perish the thought.