Congress learns to admire Manmohan Singh

For anyone other than the Nehru-Gandhis to win and command the respect and admiration of the Congress party members is an impossible thing. Even Pranab Mukherjee, the man for all crises, was disliked intensely by a large section of the party workers and activists. The attitude of the party towards prime minister Manmohan Singh is quite different. No one ever saw him as part of the Congress family. He remained an outsider, a useful techno-bureaucrat who is needed to find solutions to policy challenges. But he has never been considered a pillar of the party, something that P Chidambaram, Digvijay Singh, AK Antony enjoy. Singh has turned the status of a political cipher into an advantage. He has fought the political battle for his space in the party not on the basis of secularism, socialism and all those favoured and jaded Congress shibboleths, but on technical, economic issues.

In 2008, he turned the India-US civil nuclear deal as the battle-point. Seasoned politicians and political aficionados laughed at his naivete. But Singh turned it into a successful political issue in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. There were no immediate economic benefits to be had from the prospect of nuclear power. It will be 20 years before generation of electricity through nuclear power will become a critical factor in the Indian energy scenario.

It seems that Singh is set to do the trick again. He is on the verge of turning FDI into multi-brand retail into a political issue despite the fact that FDI in multi-brand retail will have no instant impact. Congressmen and Congresswomen are used to the mystical charisma factor of the First Family, but they do not understand the phenomenon of politics being played on the basis of development and performance which has nothing to do with welfare measures. Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit has shown that performance matters, but then, Delhi is much too small a political theatre. Manmohan Singh is staking his claims of performance and development and of taking the economy forward on the national stage.

Singh is doing something better than P V Narasimha Rao. He has kept away from party feud, while Rao engaged in it with the relish of a grassroots politician, and in the end he was politically destroyed by his rivals and opponents in the party. He is playing the outsider to the hilt. It has been said time and again, both by party insiders and party watchers, that the unforgivable political crime that Rao committed was the attempt to destroy the Nehru-Gandhi roots in the party. There is as yet no hard evidence to show that this was so, except through hearsay.

It seems that Singh is showing the Congress without challenging the authority of the Nehru-Gandhis that what a party needs is hard thinking on policy issues and its implementation. And that he is the man for the task. Of course, he faces the risk of failure and the consequent political decapitation.

Singh has been helped greatly by the atavistic NGOs who are arguing against nuclear power as well as FDI in multi-brand retail. The BJP, the main opposition party, has been gunning for Singh in the two major scams — 2G spectrum allocation and coal block allocation — but it had displayed a fatalistic Swadeshi Jagran Manch mind-set in opposing nuclear power and FDI in retail. Faced with the BJP onslaught, the Congress had to rally round Singh and the government.

Without intending to do so, Singh provoked opposition offensive which called for a Congress response and he became the hero of the battle. The BJP took pot shots at Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi, but their main target is Singh. As a matter of fact, BJP is playing a sly political game suggesting that it is time Rahul Gandhi stepped forward because it would be easier to attack him than Singh.

A young BJP leader suggested that Rahul Gandhi should not just join as a cabinet minister because after 2014, he will just be a former minister. But if he were to become the prime minister, then post-2014 he can enjoy the status of former prime minister. Singh’s critics had always mocked him that he was a better politician than an economist, and their criticism is turning out to be true much to the consternation of the opposition.

Singh, the political warrior, may not emerge a victor in the 2014 electoral battle. But his war cry, “Let us go down fighting” could turn out to be prophetic and even heroic. The Congress has at last found a leader who is capable of leading the party and the government through thick sniper fire and they seem to be grateful for it. Singh’s bravado on policy front is unlikely to negate the general perception that corruption has really eaten into the UPA government as it had the Rao government through 1991-1996.

But Singh can take satisfaction that he has kept the party in power for a decade and that he has done his bit. And unlike in the case of Rao, Singh will enjoy the gratitude of Congress. There are lessons here for other Congress leaders if they mean to lead the party and the country. They must come forward with ideas, look meek and unambitious, press forward with policy issues with fanatical ferocity and not play small games inside the party. Congress has shown that it does not grudge leaders who use brains to push economic doctrines as Singh does.

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is editorial consultant with DNA