The subtle sabotage honest efforts

When the United Progressive Alliance won the election of 2009, with the Congress increasing its tally from 145 to 206 seats, people wondered whether the era of coalitions was over.

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The subtle sabotage honest efforts

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, we have seen the best of times and the worst of times under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In the heady years 2004-2008 it seemed that double digit growth was predestined. India was the toast of national capitals. World leaders courted us and the mighty United States offered us a nuclear deal that wiped out the long history of sanctions and humiliation we faced because we were not signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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To top it all, when the United Progressive Alliance won the election of 2009, with the Congress increasing its tally from 145 to 206 seats, people wondered whether the era of coalitions was over. The Bharatiya Janata Party seemed to have gone into terminal decline.

Writing his own epitaph

Amazingly, India had withstood the global economic storm that shook the world in 2008-2009 well. Indeed, speaking to a trade body in July 2010, Manmohan Singh boasted, "Global economic recession did not have much impact on us, as it did on other countries. Our target is to bring India to double digit growth path in the next two-three years." And then came the implosion. Today, the party whose government he heads is wondering whether it will even hit three digits in the general elections that are around the corner, and the BJP has begun dreaming the dream of reaching the magic number 272 on its own. Growth seems to be sinking back to the 'Hindu rate' of 3 per cent, and the same US humiliates a senior Indian diplomat with what New Yorkers call a "perp walk", because of a technical violation of the US law. And all that Prime Minister Singh can do is to write his epitaph, as he did at his press conference earlier this year: "I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament."

How did a world-famous economist, a man not given to boast or bombast, get it so wrong? Where did his government lose its way? In some ways we are far too close to the events of our time to provide a definitive answer. But there are enough pointers to guide us a little.

206 IS NOT 272

The curse lay in the victory of 2009. First, Congressmen assumed that 206 was actually 272. They began behaving as though they were already heading a majority government at the Centre. Second, poor infrastructure, unsustainable subsidies and support prices, and global trends, brought on inflation which could not be tamed. Third, within the party, the knives were out for Singh. After all, he could not be seen as the man who brought the party its best showing since 1989. The sabotage of his government was subtle, but sustained. His writ was ignored, and his policies sabotaged.

With such a hostile internal environment, the government could hardly fight the bigger onslaught that came on the corruption front, beginning with the Adarsh revelations in 2010 and continuing with the regularity of a metronome -Commonwealth Games scam, 2G scam, the aborted Central Vigilance Commissioner appointment and so on. With the BJP showing no signs of life, civil society stepped in with an anti-corruption movement that shook the government and the country, and whose consequences have yet to be fully revealed.

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This said, it cannot be denied that the government did achieve a great deal. In the anger against the party we forget that the years of hope and achievement.

It would only be fair to leave the matter of judging Singh's record to historians of the future. But this much we can say that he was an honest man, and his intentions were good. But when they were subverted, he remained a hapless bystander.