No matter how hard prime minister Manmohan Singh tries to explain that “his government was not lame-duck nor was he a lame-duck prime minister”, it is very late in the day for public perception about him to change. Lame-duck prime minister is not a mere perception, it is a hard fact.

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Singh didn’t rise this far because of any of his personal political achievements. In his entire career from finance minister to prime minister of the largest democracy of the world, he has faced electorate once only in his life and which he lost badly.

His becoming prime minister is attributed to his clean image, unassuming attitude, and his loyalty towards his political leadership. Loyalty in politics is a very rare quality, but it is not a virtue for him; it is part of the job profile to keep surviving at the top.

Pragmatism beyond a point turns out to be sheer opportunism; meekness pays more than becoming a man of his own. Let Manmohan Singh overstep the assigned role or ignore the lines dictated by 10 Janpath, his sun will be forced to set in the middle of the day.

What else will a pragmatic man at the mercy of the dynasty do to keep his job other than to be the loyal servant of the Gandhi clan, including the private secretaries. He is not assertive and has confined himself to being the prime minister of the PMO. What else can he be described as if not a lame-duck prime minister? Moreover, the honest tag is also a misnomer

. What worth is Dr Manmohan Singh’s supposedly personal honesty when he is besieged by the most corrupt people and he still wants to cling to his job? In a corrupt and dubious culture where it is very difficult for people to even become an MLA without political patronage, how did Manmohan Singh negotiate the ladder and snake game?

From humble teacher to prime minister of India is a phenomenal rise. Merely on this basis of intellect and without any political base, nobody in India becomes a prime minister? To survive in this dirty environment, one has to learn to live with the dirt spread all over the place. And still people boast that they are honest?

It is not honesty that Manmohan Singh claims to have Maruti 800 parked in his garage and his wife still knows the price of an LPG cylinder. But he allows Rs176,000 crores to be robed from the public exchequer and he keeps quiet to save his job. Manmohan Singh is not only presiding over a dispensation having governance deficit, as he agreed during his media interaction “weaknesses of processes in governance”, it is government badly laden with ethical deficit.

The prime minister cannot escape the responsibility and still claim to be a man of integrity. Had Manmohan Singh, instead of clinging to power, resigned and walked away from a corrupt dispensation, he would have made entire India proud.

Moreover, the prime minister has extended a very weak but weird logic to the moral turpitude displayed by the UPA regime. “I am conscious about personal responsibility. I feel about it. My compulsion is that I have to bear a lot because we cannot have elections in every six months and some compromises have to be made in managing a coalition."

By doing so he has juxtaposed the stability argument with ethics. For all these years, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt prolonged his despotic regime in the name of stability.

It is the era of coalition politics in India and ethical value in the society are also on the wane. Suppose tomorrow all crooks and criminals come to occupy the benches of Lok Sabha and decide that since corruption has become a part of life and is no longer considered a corrupt practice, let graft be legalised.

Will Manmohan Singh in the name of stability allow a bill to be passed in the parliament legalising corruption? Any honourable man worth his name will not hesitate for a minute to decide between what is ethical and otherwise.

Honest men are not those who are compelled by the unethical demands of coalition partners and carry on with their jobs as nothing has happened. This isn’t politics, it’s prostitution. What can one do with the modern times, where prostitution is licensed and politicians, after breaking all the rules of ethics, still like to be called an honest politician?