Will the new political song save PM Manmohan Singh?

Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday reveals uncharacteristic clarity and candour about India’s view of the global economic crisis and the political volatility in west Asia. Singh seemed to have picked up enough courage, so it seems to observers, to be critical of the assumptions behind free market economy and consequent globalisation on the one hand, and the continued high-handed antics of the United States and its Nato allies in Libya. Singh also made bold to support the Palestinian bid for statehood which the US was opposing tooth and nail, and had a bilateral meeting with Iranian president Ahmedinijad.

This shows up Singh in a different light. He has been seen, and he has done thing to dispel the impression, that he is very much a pro-American Indian politician, who saw lots of advantage for India in a cosy and fruitful relationship with the unruly Big Brother of world economy and politics. When diehard socialists, it was not just the antiquated commies, in India attacked him for being pro-West and pro-imperialist, he showed utmost disdain for his critics and did not even bother to answer them. And when he defended with all the passion at his command the India-US civil nuclear deal in 2008 he did so in the name of national interest.

For a moment even his recalcitrant party, the Congress, fell in line.

Singh left no one in doubt that he saw both the compulsion and advantage for India of being in the American camp. It was of course it was not a personal stance. He managed to build a consensus of sorts at the top of the political pyramid, which would include Congress president Sonia Gandhi, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, home minister P Chidambaram. The odd man out was former minister for external affairs Natwar Singh, who was forced out and a clearly pro-American SM Krishna was brought in his place. 

The Friday speech at the UNGA seems to mark an end to this phase in his policy stance. Of course, in the economic sphere he is not advocating a return to the old and dead certainties of state-managed economies. As a matter of fact, he is criticising the developed economies for their political temptation to protect their respective national economies. He has warned against raising ugly protectionist walls. But he allowed himself the room to refer to the negative dimension of globalisation without spelling out the specifics.

What has caused the change in Singh’s worldview? Is this his desperate last-ditch attempt to retain leadership advantage at a time when he is facing the political firing squad as it were both from the opposition and from within his own party? Did he feel compelled to speak out though knowing full well that what he said is not going to change by a whit the global scenario? It is clearly a gambit to reposition himself in the domestic politics. His rivals and his peers in the Congress are not capable of lending intellectual credibility to policy articulation the way Singh can still do. The others are mere politicians and he is a politician who can think, at least at the abstract level. Sometimes the country needs that. Singh seems to have sensed it.