The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (45 page)

 

 

Back in Singapore I would get the occasional email or telephone call from a journalist who would bring me up to speed with election news and political gossip. Many believed that Dr Singh’s face had been printed on the cover of the manifesto and on election posters so that the expected defeat in that election could be explained away as his defeat and Rahul Gandhi, whose picture was not printed on the party manifesto or posters, could then claim leadership as the agent of change. One senior political journalist who claimed he had spoken to Ahmed Patel told me that Rahul, in fact, looked forward to a tenure as the leader of the Opposition so as to burnish his own political credentials, differentiating himself, perhaps even distancing himself, from Dr Singh’s legacy. Few expected the Congress to return to power until almost the very end of the campaign. They all underestimated Dr Singh’s popularity and the lacklustre image of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, among his own partymen.

When the results came in, not only had the UPA won a clear majority but the Congress improved its tally from 145 seats in UPA-1 to 206. While this represented only a modest shift in vote share—the Congress’s vote share went up by 2.02 per cent—it represented wider urban support for the Congress. The UPA not only won almost all the seats in all metros, save Bengaluru, but also saw a 19 per cent increase in urban votes compared to a 14 per cent increase in the rural vote. In 2004 it was Sonia Gandhi who helped the Congress move up from the 114 of 1999 to 145 seats. In 2009, it was Dr Singh’s tenure during UPA-1 that helped the party secure 206 seats—nine more than the 197 seats that Rajiv Gandhi managed to deliver in 1989, after five years in office. In Punjab, the Congress saw a massive 11 per cent increase in vote share, five times more than the national increase in the Congress’s vote share. Had Dr Singh contested from Amritsar, he would have won easily. Dr Singh’s five years of 9 per cent growth, his standing up to the Left on the nuclear deal in defence of the national interest, and the BJP voters’ disappointment with Advani’s lacklustre leadership had helped win the urban voter over.

The fear generated by Dr Singh’s critics in the Congress party that the nuclear deal would alienate Muslim voters proved to be misplaced. The theory that the rural employment guarantee programme would be a vote winner was also disproved by the fact that the country’s more backward states voted for the BJP and other parties, while it was western Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and a clutch of urban centres that gave the Congress its additional seats. What rural and Muslim voters had said to Vidya Subrahmaniam of
The
Hindu,
when asked who they would support, truly summed up the mood.
‘Congress
ko.
Sardarji
ko,’
they had said, calling the PM a
‘neyk
aadmi
(good man).

This was also a historic verdict. For the first time after 1962, a sitting prime minister who had served a full five-year term was being re-elected with an improved majority. Indira Gandhi entered office in the middle of a term and got re-elected in 1971, after victory in a war with Pakistan, so she did not get two full terms in succession. After Nehru no PM has managed to get re-elected after a full five-year term. Vajpayee’s re-election in 1999 followed a premature end to his first term. Dr Singh’s victory was a game changer.

 

 

On the day of the victory, as results poured in, I was watching the news on CNN-IBN on my laptop at home. The panellists were discussing if the stunning results were because of Manmohan Singh. Then the channel’s political reporter Pallavi Ghosh appeared on the screen, reporting from the Congress party office. She had Prithviraj Chavan with her.

‘So who is the architect of this victory?’ Pallavi asked Prithvi. ‘Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh?’

Prithvi, the man who was handpicked by Dr Singh to be his MoS in the PMO and kept there for a full five years despite a lacklustre record, said the politically correct thing, ‘Both!’ He then added a spin, ‘This victory is a vote for Rahul Gandhi. Rahulji’s good work helped us win.’

The chant became the official mantra. Rahul Gandhi, every party loyalist claimed, was the architect of the 2009 result. In the very hour of victory, its authorship was denied to the man who made it happen.

The way I saw it, if the Congress had lost, the blame for the defeat would have been placed squarely on the PM’s shoulders. It would be said his obsession with the nuclear deal cost the party the support of the Left and the Muslims. His ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies would have been deemed to have alienated the poor. His attempt to befriend Musharraf would have been regarded as having alienated the Hindu vote. A hundred explanations would have been trotted out to pin the defeat on the PM. Now that the party was back in office, and that too with more numbers than anyone in the party had forecast, the credit would go to the party’s ‘first family’. To the scion and future leader. It was Rahul’s victory, not Manmohan’s.

After the elections, Dr Singh did try to be more assertive, taking a view on who would be in his Cabinet and who would not, and resisting the induction of the DMK’s A. Raja and T.R. Baalu, for their unsavoury reputations. Watching from the sidelines, I had hoped he would not buckle under pressure. Dr Singh stood his ground for a day, managed to keep Baalu out, but had to yield ground on Raja under pressure from his own party. To me, it was a reiteration of the message that the victory was not his but the Family’s.

 

 

On 2 June 2009, I flew down to Delhi and met Dr Singh. I was told he would see me at 7 RCR. When I reached 7 RCR I was told he was at 3 RCR and I should go there. I decided to walk and took the path that Dr Singh would take almost every day, along the spacious lawns of 7 and 5 RCR, through the wall that separated them, with an expanse of green and tall trees all around. Meanwhile, Dr Singh had been informed that I had arrived at 7 RCR and chose to walk towards it. We met at 5 RCR. It was past ten in the morning in early June. The temperature must have already been upwards of 38 degrees Celsius. It felt blazing hot. I asked him why he was walking in the hot sun.

‘Oh, this is nothing,’ he said, as he continued to walk briskly towards 7 RCR. ‘I campaigned in this heat.’

I had read about it in Singapore. Everyone was amazed that after a major surgery in February, he was out campaigning in April-May. Dr Singh was a step ahead of me. Murali and I were walking behind him, with the SPG guards a step behind.

He half turned his head towards me. I could see the expression of great pride on his face when he said, ‘I was willing to sacrifice my life for the victory.’

He asked me what my plans were. I told him that my contract required me to give two months’ notice. If I gave in my resignation that very day, I would be able to join by 1 August. But, I clarified, I did not want to return as media adviser. Deepak Sandhu was doing a good job as his press secretary. I could help her and support her but it was best she continued. I could be called ‘adviser to PM’ and do whatever he wanted me to.

‘You can be called secretary to PM. Dhar Saheb used to be called secretary to PM,’ he said.

The reference to Professor P.N. Dhar, the Delhi School economist who was inducted into Indira Gandhi’s PMO and worked alongside P.N. Haksar, left me surprised and flattered. I had enormous regard for Dhar, with whom I made friends during my days as editorial page editor of the
Times
of
India,
persuading him to publish his account of what transpired at Shimla in 1972 between Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, twenty-five years after the event. According to him, Bhutto had been ready to settle Kashmir at the summit, but Indira, showing statesmanship, did not force concessions that he would have found hard to defend at home. Dhar’s column, when published, received a lot of attention in Pakistan and India, and we would discuss this often. In the process, I learnt about his special relationship with Indira, as an adviser with an academic rather than a bureaucratic background.

So I was excited by Dr Singh’s reference to Dhar and his suggestion that I could play that kind of a role in the PMO. But I was not comfortable with the designation of secretary in the PMO, though that was the rank I had had as media adviser. If I was designated ‘secretary’ rather than ‘adviser’, I would have to report to the principal secretary. As media adviser, I reported directly to the PM, so I suggested he designate me ‘adviser’ rather than ‘secretary’. He agreed, and I went back to Singapore.

On 3 June, I submitted my resignation to Kishore Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, where I taught. I shared with Kishore my real reason for quitting but requested him to keep it confidential. A few days later, a government gossip website, www.whispersinthecorridors.com, reported that I would be returning to the PMO. I had no idea how the news had leaked out but I put it down to just intelligent guesswork or speculation. The ‘whispers’ website was normally fed by secretarial staff and reporters. Someone might have seen me at RCR and put two and two together.

The editor of
Business
Standard
T.N. Ninan called me a few days later to say that his correspondent had filed a report that I was to return to the PMO and would be made responsible for monitoring implementation of the UPA’s flagship programmes. I told him I was not aware of this. He assured me that the reporter had secured the story from Prithviraj Chavan and said
BS
would run it unless I denied it. I assumed Prithvi had briefed the reporter after having been told of the decision by the PM. So I did not deny it but asked Ninan to make sure the story was authenticated by the PMO. Little did I suspect that this leak might have been part of an effort to sabotage my return.

The day after the
BS
story appeared, Jaideep called me and said that the news report had created problems ‘with the party’ and that the PM had asked him to advise me to delay my return. I told him that I had already submitted my resignation and it would be embarrassing for me to tell the dean that I would just hang around till some uncertain date in the future without taking up any teaching work. I could either return on 1 August or on 1 January, after teaching for one more semester. Jaideep suggested I come to Delhi and meet the PM.

It was not convenient for me to make a trip to Delhi at that time. I was in the middle of teaching and other work. I was also angry and irritated by this turn of events. To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM’s display of spinelessness, even after this handsome victory. If he was unable to make appointments in his own office, he was ‘yielding space’ too soon. That phrase—yielding space—was one that I had picked up from him when he advised me not to drop out of a tour with him because someone else would end up doing my job. Why, I wondered, was he yielding space now, succumbing to pressure to keep me out? Clearly, I had not yet understood the extent to which the party would go to defang the PM.

I told Jaideep that I could not afford to buy another ticket, having just gone to Delhi and returned at my own expense, so I would come in early July after a scheduled trip to Kathmandu for which the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was paying. I was doing a report on SAARC for the ADB. I flew into Delhi from Kathmandu on 11 July and met the PM the same day.