The prime minister has an image problem

Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s short and angry intervention during the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010, was combative. He rebutted the charge that he had a pro-American bias.He said the same charge was made against him when he had presented his 1992 budget, but it was that budget which kicked off economic reforms and brought the country to its present economically advantageous position.

History had vindicated him, and he was confident in the matter of nuclear energy, it would do so again.

It was the self-justification of a self-righteous man who believes that he is doing right by the country.

No doubt, the opening up of the economy has turned the tide of fortune and history for the country.

But he needs to remind himself that while economic reforms were the right thing to do, he lacked the clarity and courage to take the country into confidence about what he was doing.

It was futile of him to deny then that there was no American pressure to take those decisions, or that the IMF had not laid down any conditions. India yielded on some issues and resisted others. And it managed to get out of the iron-clasp of the IMF partly, no doubt, due to Singh’s bureaucratic skills. 

There was a flip side to the reforms, too: they were ushered in through the backdoor in an underhand manner. If there are two persons who gave a bad name to economic reforms, it was Singh, who was then the finance minister, and PV Narasimha Rao, who was prime minister.

Had Singh and Rao made the reforms process transparent, a larger number of people would have accepted it and it would have had greater success.

Singh has gone on to adopt the same strategy of doing things quietly and behind closed doors with regard to the India-US civil nuclear deal and, now, with the nuclear liability bill. He must be doing the right thing but he is not doing it the right way.

Had he been more forthright about the inherent complications and conceded that there was indeed pressure from the Americans, the country would have trusted him much more.

Singh has to face up to the unpalatable reality that even ordinary people who generally respect him think that he has a soft corner for the Americans.

The prime minister has an image problem. Getting angry does not help. He has to argue his position better.