Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 5, 2010
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/come-back-prime-minister/720615/0
While us hawk-eyed political pundits have
spent the past weeks preoccupied by scams and tapes, something very bad has
happened to the government of Dr Manmohan Singh. It appears quietly to have
slipped its moorings and is now being tossed about rudderless on a very choppy
sea. The pivot of any government is the Prime Minister and what makes the
current situation worse is that the man at the helm has himself taken a virtual
sabbatical. We see him now and then at some social or political event but
he keeps his thoughts to himself most of the time even when he sees his ministers
wandering about making dangerously arbitrary decisions. Often when they make
them, they hint that they are acting on 'orders from above' and by this, they
do not mean Dr Manmohan Singh.
The Prime Minister, on account of being appointed
and not elected, has never been very assertive but he has so far exhibited
a dignified and firm grasp on the reins of government that seem now to have
slipped out of his hands. Before writing this, I made some inquiries to find
out why this has happened and came up mostly with the explanation that Dr
Manmohan Singh is slowly abdicating in favour of the Crown Prince whose assertiveness
(till the Bihar results) was exactly parallel with the Prime Minister's quiet
disappearance into some backroom. The problem is that this has resulted in
so much chaos and uncertainty that someone who chooses his words as carefully
as Ratan Tata described the atmosphere in the country as resembling that of
a 'banana republic'. An accurate description since this term is used to describe
a country without institutions of democracy and without the rule of law. Cast
your eye for a few moments on the pillars of Indian democracy and you may
notice that they have been under sustained assault in recent weeks.
There was, first, the spectrum scandal whose
figures are so mind-boggling that they seem hardly credible. It caused serious
damage to the image of the government and finally forced A. Raja out of a
job he should have been thrown out of long ago. This caused the opposition
parties to stall Parliament for the whole of this session over the meaningless
demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) into the scam. Not a single
JPC has been of much use in the past which makes their stand difficult to
understand but what is even harder to understand is why the government does
not concede a demand that will put the scandal in cold storage long enough
for it to be erased from public memory.
Meanwhile, there has been the inexplicably
cussed behaviour on the part of a Central Viligance Commissioner who should
resign out of respect for his own dignity if for no other reason. How can
India have a CVC who worked under A. Raja when he was selling off spectrum
at a huge loss to Indian taxpayers? If all of this was not already bad enough
for Indian democracy, we have the additional problem of the media coming under
brutal public scrutiny because of the Radia tapes. From Twitter it is easy
for anyone to discover that the iconic status of the journalists caught on
the tapes has caused a huge loss of trust in the media as a whole. I have
found it hard to comment on anything in recent weeks without some twitterer
asking if I have been paid to say what I did.
It is a bleak political moment for India.
It is not just institutions that are under attack but policies. The Prime
Minister is the man responsible for transforming India with his economic reforms
that moved us away from statism and central planning towards a more open economy.
Thanks to these reforms, we now have a middle class that is larger than the
population of the United States of America. Thanks to these reforms, every
other Indian now owns a cell phone. Thanks to these reforms, television has
spread its tentacles into the remotest parts of India and acts as an engine
of change. But, we now have some of Dr Manmohan Singh's ministers bringing
the license raj back through dangerously capricious acts and they have so
far got away with their depredations.
Unless the Prime Minister comes back and takes
charge, this sense of drift is going to make India increasingly resemble a
banana republic. It is not possible for a country the size of a continent
to be governed well unless there is a firm hand on the rudder. So please come
back Prime Minister and do your best to try and halt the drift before it is
too late. Then, if it is your heart's desire to let the Crown Prince take
the wheel that is your choice.
- Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
