‘A grass blade in a storm’: Arc of Manmohan Singh’s journey, from economic reform face to ‘accidental PM’

The 91-year-old Manmohan Singh has just retired from active politics — after being an MP for 33 years. And as India readies for another mega electoral battle, and as parties start trading fireworks, it is a moment to consider the journey this scholarly, soft-spoken, cautious leader attacked for his silences – he was called “mauni baba” – has made. After Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, he is the only Indian PM who ruled for ten years.

His sixth Rajya Sabha term ended on Wednesday. He has always been a member of the Upper House.

Singh contested the Lok Sabha election once — from South Delhi in 1999 — but lost. It was suspected at the time that some senior Congress leaders had worked behind the scenes to ensure his defeat in a bid to prevent him from acquiring the image of a popularly elected leader. After that, the once-bitten, twice-shy Singh never attempted a run for the Lok Sabha – not taking that risk even when he was the PM from 2004 to 2014.

Interestingly, as he retired from the Rajya Sabha, Sonia Gandhi enters the Upper House for the first time as a Congress MP from Rajasthan — the state that Singh represented for the last six years, having been elected to the House earlier from Assam.

Today, one wonders what would be Singh’s thoughts on his journey – his achievements as well as what he would have liked to have done differently. What worried him the most, it seemed to me during our conversation, was the enormous “bitterness” that had crept in the relations between the ruling side and the Opposition, which he felt was “not good” for democracy.

Singh’s rise from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of power is the story of a self-made man; that such a rise can take place in India is to the credit of India’s incredible democracy, however faltering it may be. Born in Gah, a backward village in west Punjab (now in Pakistan), which did not have any school, health facilities or electricity, he used to walk miles to go to an Urdu medium school — and would study under the kerosene lamp at night. He attributed his rise to the “system of scholarships” for poor students that existed at the time.

There are few individuals in public life who have had the kind of experience that Singh acquired while heading a slew of the country’s top institutions of governance – from being chief economic advisor and Reserve Bank of India governor to finance secretary and UGC chairperson. He also became the Planning Commission deputy chairman with a deep understanding of the country’s federal set-up and Centre-state relations.

After holding these key positions, he was brought in 1991 as a “technocrat” finance minister by P V Narasimha Rao when the latter suddenly became the PM in the wake of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Even before his swearing-in, Rao found himself confronted with a severe balance of payment crisis and India on the verge of a default. While Rao took the bold decision of taking India out of the “licence quota raj” towards structural reforms — India’s options were limited as the Soviet Union had collapsed and it was a US-led unipolar world it faced — he was ably assisted by Manmohan Singh as they went on to usher in reforms and stabilise the economy. A champion of economic liberalisation, Singh as the PM later presided over an expanding economy with a trajectory of high growth.

It was an unexpected turn of events which made Singh the “accidental Prime Minister” in 2004. Sonia Gandhi was elected as the Congress Parliamentary Party leader after the general elections, and was also chosen as the UPA chairperson. But she decided not to become the PM.

Sonia anointed Singh as the PM, which created an unusual power-sharing model — she took care of the “political” decisions and he of “governance” (even though the two are inseparable). She was soon seen as the real power centre. But Singh, in the words of one of his ministers, remained “endlessly gracious” even when his instructions were ignored by his colleagues who looked up to Sonia Gandhi more for steers.

He was likened to a blade of grass which bends when the storm comes, not like a tree which stands erect and crashes. That is one of the reasons why he survived for ten years as the PM.

He “accommodated“ not just Sonia but also senior leaders like Pranab Mukherjee who had to work under him. Mukherjee headed most of GoMs (Group of Ministers) and EGoMs (Empowered GoMs) , through which Singh chose to run his government. He used to address Pranab as “sir” before he became PM – and for some time even afterwards until Pranab urged him not to do it.

Soon after he took charge as the PM, one of the first questions Singh had to address was where to get Sonia seated in Parliament. This was a tricky issue, given her enhanced stature after saying “no” to the PMship. It was again Pranab who came to his rescue and found a satisfactory seating arrangement for her in the front row.

In September 2013 , Rahul Gandhi “gate-crashed” a press conference and trashed an ordinance cleared by the Manmohan Singh Cabinet, calling it “complete nonsense”. The ordinance had overturned the Supreme Court’s ruling that MPs would immediately lose their membership if they were sentenced to a prison term of at least two years. It was seen as Singh’s weakest moment as the PM. Many felt he would resign. He did not. What is not so widely known is that Rahul had apologised to Singh afterwards, as per informed sources.

There was, however, one issue on which he remained unyielding, no matter what the obstacles that came his way — the Indo-US nuclear deal (in 2008), which led to a strategic relationship with the US, a process which continues apace. Singh and US President George Bush enjoyed a remarkable chemistry in their relations. Bush the loud, hearty Texan was impressed with Manmohan Singh’s “integrity, intelligence and self deprecating ways” and would ask his officials, “What does Manmohan Singh want? I am committed to him.” Though deals are about the self interest of nations, and the US saw India as a counter to China in the region, it might not have gone through without Bush and Singh at the heart of it. They pursued it with a dogged zeal for over 39 months.

It was during this period that Singh showed a political savvy few thought he possessed, displaying a killer instinct, deploying “saam daam dand bhed”, getting the better of Sonia, who opposed the deal initially, and the Left parties, which threatened to withdraw their critical support and finally did it. Sonia’s powerful political secretary Ahmed Patel was heard remarking in frustration, “Who is Doctor Sahib to decide about alliances, that is the job of the party (Congress)?”

But Singh mobilised alternative support from the Samajwadi Party – belying the belief about him that he was politically naïve and essentially a bureaucrat. While he was viewed as a “weak PM”, and scams were to riddle his second term, in this instance, he showed that he could hold his own and be his own man.

Singh would have chafed against being hemmed in as the PM by an assertive Congress brass, though he did not go public about it. He did threaten to resign several times during his premiership– but did not go ahead and do it.

The architect of India’s economic reforms, the only Sikh PM the country has had, Singh was chosen as the PM because he was Sonia’s best bet. He had no personal agenda, nor a constituency of his own.

But a key question that history may judge him on — kindly or otherwise — is this: Even though the 2004 model underlined a power-sharing arrangement with Sonia, could Singh have pushed the envelope more, with a greater assertion of the authority of the position of the Prime Minister of India?

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of ‘How Prime Ministers Decide’)