Needed a Shah Commission to inquire into Soniag_MMS operation destruction of Indian Constitution. It should be the way Justice Shah unraveled the atrocities of the Emergency. The current subversion is most insidious, diabolical because this was done even without declaring a State of Emergency.Dr Sanjay Baru spills the beans in his book, says Sonia Gandhi cleared files before PM!This is violation of the oath of office and Official Secrets Act. This is subversion of nation's constitutional institutions and Constitutional mandate. Both SoniaG and MMS should be accountable under law. Will Hon'ble SC take suo moto notice and constitute a Special Investigation Team under its supervision? Kalyan Untold accidents at the topBook suggests PM threatened to quit | ||
| SANKARSHAN THAKUR April 12, 2014 | ||
New Delhi, April 11: Sanjaya Baru’s fresh-off-the-press account of Manmohan Singh’s first term has drawn a quick punch from the outgoing Prime Minister’s office. And probably dealt the book a high-powered kick-start. A terse statement from the PMO greeted the arrival of Baru’s The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh in stores this evening. The statement said of the book: “It is an attempt tomisuse a privileged position and access to high officeto gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gain. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of a former adviser.” The statement also made to belittle the veracity of Baru’s retelling, quoting the Prime Minister himself. “The question about comments of the former media adviser was raised by senior editors when they met the Prime Minister in October last year. His answer was: ‘Do not believe all he is saying’,” the statement said. Baru was the media adviser to Prime Minister Singh through the UPA’s first term. None in Singh’s PMO was willing to either identify portions the Prime Minister had a quarrel with or put out specific counters. Contacted by The Telegraph tonight, PMO sources said they had nothing to add to the statement. A senior official did say, though, that apart from the tone and “certain sections” of the content, the Prime Minister was particularly upset by the timing of the book’s release. Singh is bowing out after a 10-year term in a welter of allegations ranging from corruption to inflation to policy standstill; his party, the Congress, is struggling on a steep uphill to retain power. “The release of such a book at this time is going to impact the course of the campaignand hurt the Congress,” the official said. “The sense here is that if this is not a politically motivated exercise, it could have waited until the end of the campaign.” The Accidental Prime Minister is a Penguin Viking imprint and became available forsale today. Excerpts from the book will be published in The Telegraph this Sunday. Baru reacted with cryptic stoicism to the PMO’s jab. “I am amused,” he said. His book, though, will not amuse the Prime Minister or the Congress establishment, it is clear. Many of Baru’s ringside revelations and observations cast embarrassing light on the manner in which the UPA was run even during its first, and more successful, term. One case Baru makes through his memoir of the PMO in UPA-I is that Singh was not themaster of his PMO, and was being constantly undermined by powerful people in the Congress establishment. A key disclosure Baru makes is that the Prime Minister actually threatened to quit over the Indo-US nuclear deal: “When I asked him about Sonia’s message, sent through Montek (Singh Ahluwalia), Dr Singh confirmed that she was trying to persuade him to wait and not force the pace of events. I warned him that if he did not act now, the rest of his term would be wasted. “The Left would smell victory and might even press for a change of prime minister. I reminded him that the Left had a track record of doing just that. They had claimed credit for replacing the ‘pro-business’ Morarji Desai with the ‘pro-farmer’ Charan Singh in 1978; of forcing the exit of V.P. Singh and replacing him with the ‘young turk’ Chandra Shekhar in 1989; of helping ‘leftist’ I.K. Gujral replace ‘pro-Narasimha Rao’ Deve Gowda in 1997. Now they would claim credit, I warned him, for replacing ‘neo-liberal’ Manmohan Singh with ‘secular’ Arjun Singh, ‘Bengali’ Pranab — the CPI(M) was essentially a Bengal party — or ‘leftist’ Antony, who was an old ally of the comrades from Kerala. “Dr Singh laughed. ‘I am ready to go. Anyone of them can be made PM. Why not?’” At one point, Baru even calls the Prime Minister spineless and depicts him as a man not in control of the affairs of the high office he held. This relates to the interregnum between Singh’s two terms in office. Baru had quit the PMO a little before the end of Singh’s first term and taken up a teaching assignment in Singapore. Shortly after the UPA returned to power in 2009, Singh wanted Baru to return to the PMO and had him return to India. They negotiated, but Baru says his return fell through because of political pressure from the Congress top brass. At the end of an engrossing description of the shifting of power levers in the PMO and the Congress, Baru concludes: “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.” The PMO’s criticism of the book, though, may end up achieving what it has mocked it for; in reacting in the way it has and calling it an exercise aimed at “commercial gain”, it could actually churn curiosity and push sales. Especially when the nation is in the throes of its biggest, and probably bitterest, electoral battle, and the political atmosphere charged. According to those who have read advance copies, the book is a racy 300-odd page insider account littered with anecdotes surrounding the high and mighty who ran Manmohan’s first PMO. Among some highlights they flagged are first-hand accounts of ego battles between the Prime Minister’s top mandarins and the often tense power relations between the Prime Minister and the Congress. “It is unlike previous accounts to come out of the Prime Minister’s office in the sense that it is written lucidly and littered with direct conversations between the Prime Minister, his top officials and Baru himself,” said one, speaking from the advantage of a sneak preview. “It’s anecdotal, gossipy, it gives you a whiff of the goings-on in the PMO like nothing else before.” Tell-all memoirs by senior politicians, bureaucrats or political advisers are nothing new in the West, but this could well be a ground-breaking book in this genre for the home readership, coming from a man who sat close to the Prime Minister and had direct access to him throughout UPA I. “The one big sense Baru seems to convey is that the Prime Minister, even in UPA I, was never given his due by the party. The book has much more, especially about the big power players of the time and how they impacted key political and policy decisions,” said one with access to an advance copy of the book that’s set to intervene in the discourse for Campaign 2014. |
Sonia chose finance minister without consulting Manmohan, gave instructions on key files: Book
According to Baru, Congress MPs “did not seeloyalty to the PM as a political necessity, nor did Dr Singh seek loyalty in the way. Sonia and her aides sought it.”
NEW DELHI: After the Congress's electoral victory in 2009, PM Manmohan Singh made "the cardinal mistake of imagining the victory was his. Bit by bit, in the space of a few weeks he was defanged. He thought he could induct the ministers he wanted. Sonia nipped that hope in the bud by offering the finance portfolio to Pranab (Mukherjee), without even consulting him," reveals a new book. Singh had apparently been keen to appoint his principal economic adviser C Rangarajan, "the comrade with whom he had battled the balance of payments crisis of 1991-92", as finance minister.
The author, Sanjaya Baru, who was media adviser to the PM in UPA-1, claims that when it seemed the Congress would cave in to the Left on the nuclear deal with the US, a dejected Singh told a couple of confidants, "She (Sonia) has let me down." And he adds that Pulok Chatterjee, who served in the PMO in UPA-1 and is now principal secretary to the PM, would have "regular, almost daily meetings with Sonia Gandhi in which he was said to brief her... and seek her instructions on the important files to be cleared by the PM."
The PM seemed to have had little authority over his own Cabinet. "No one in Singh's council ofministers seemed to feel that he owed his position, rank or portfolio to him. The final word always was that of leaders of the parties constituting the UPA," says the book. It adds that Singh often faced challenges while dealing with senior Congress ministers like Arjun Singh, A K Antony and the "presumed PM-in-waiting" Pranab Mukherjee. "Each had a mind of his own and each was conscious of his political status and rank".
According to Baru, Congress MPs "did not see loyalty to the PM as a political necessity, nor did Dr Singh seek loyalty in the way. Sonia and her aides sought it."
For years, Singh's stoic silence has made him the target of many unkind remarks. But the secrecyshrouding his functioning — and his relationship with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi — has now been breached by a man he had handpicked. While offering the job to Baru, Singh had requested him to be "his eyes and ears". Ten years on, Baru has chosen to exercise his voice — and it couldn't have come at a worse time for the Congress.
Baru's book, 'The Accidental Prime Minister' paints a picture of a PM who decided to "surrender" to the party boss and the UPA allies. According to Baru, Sonia's "renunciation of power was more a political tactic than a response to a higher calling".
![]()
Predictably, the book has already evoked sharp responses. The PM's current media advisor, Pankaj Pachauri, dismissed the book "as an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gains. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of the former advisor". A later statement issued by the PMO said, "It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Shrimati Sonia Gandhi. The statement is...completely baseless and mischievous." Baru's response was a pithy, "I am amused. All I can say is that the statement could have been drafted better."
Much of what Baru — who served between 2004 and 2008 — has written has been long heard on the Capital's political grapevine, but this is the first time an insider has spilled the beans quite so candidly. On the question of a 'diarchy' or two power centres, Baru says there was no such confusion in Singh's mind. He quotes Singh as having told him, "I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party."
According to Baru, Singh shared a good working equation with finance minister P Chidambaram in UPA-I. He would insist that Chidambaram sit with him and finalize the budget speech. In contrast, his relationship with Pranab Mukherjee was far more formal. Mukherjee would apparently not even show Singh the draft of the budget speech till he had finished writing it.
The book also claims that Singh had tried to resist the induction of DMK's A Raja well before the 2G scam became public knowledge. "But after asserting himself for a full twenty-four hours, (he) caved in to pressure from both his own party and the DMK."
Baru claims that there was an eagerness to claim all social development programmes as the Sonia Gandhi-chaired National Advisory Council's initiatives, even though the Bharat Nirman programme came out of the PMO — drafted by the late R Gopalakrishnan, who was joint secretary.
He also claims that on September 26, 2007 — Manmohan Singh's 75th birthday — Rahul Gandhi led a delegation of general secretaries to wish him. Rahul wanted to extend NREGA to all 500 rural districts in the country. Baru sent a text message to a journalist that this was the PM's birthday gift to the country. When he was summoned by the PM, he apparently told Singh, "You and Raghuvansh Prasad (then minister for rural development) deserve as much credit." The PM snapped: "I do not want any credit for myself... Let them take all the credit. I don't need it. I am only doing my work."
The book also reveals that Singh had threatened to quit if the UPA buckled under Left pressure and had told Sonia Gandhi to look for his replacement. Even as rumours circulated that Pranab Mukherjee or Sushil Kumar Shinde might be considered as his replacement, the NCP backed him, with Praful Patel telling Baru they would not support anyone but "Doctor Saheb".
Sonia then reportedly asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, to convince the PM not to resign. She also visited Singh at his residence with Pranab Mukherjee. The government was then allowed to proceed with the deal.
However, such shows of resolve from Singh were not forthcoming in UPA-II. Baru cites his own case when the PM wanted to reappoint him as a secretary in the PMO in 2009. However, he had to drop the plan as he was told that the party was opposed to such a move. "To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM's display of spinelessness," writes Baru.
![]()
The author, Sanjaya Baru, who was media adviser to the PM in UPA-1, claims that when it seemed the Congress would cave in to the Left on the nuclear deal with the US, a dejected Singh told a couple of confidants, "She (Sonia) has let me down." And he adds that Pulok Chatterjee, who served in the PMO in UPA-1 and is now principal secretary to the PM, would have "regular, almost daily meetings with Sonia Gandhi in which he was said to brief her... and seek her instructions on the important files to be cleared by the PM."
The PM seemed to have had little authority over his own Cabinet. "No one in Singh's council ofministers seemed to feel that he owed his position, rank or portfolio to him. The final word always was that of leaders of the parties constituting the UPA," says the book. It adds that Singh often faced challenges while dealing with senior Congress ministers like Arjun Singh, A K Antony and the "presumed PM-in-waiting" Pranab Mukherjee. "Each had a mind of his own and each was conscious of his political status and rank".
According to Baru, Congress MPs "did not see loyalty to the PM as a political necessity, nor did Dr Singh seek loyalty in the way. Sonia and her aides sought it."
For years, Singh's stoic silence has made him the target of many unkind remarks. But the secrecyshrouding his functioning — and his relationship with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi — has now been breached by a man he had handpicked. While offering the job to Baru, Singh had requested him to be "his eyes and ears". Ten years on, Baru has chosen to exercise his voice — and it couldn't have come at a worse time for the Congress.
Baru's book, 'The Accidental Prime Minister' paints a picture of a PM who decided to "surrender" to the party boss and the UPA allies. According to Baru, Sonia's "renunciation of power was more a political tactic than a response to a higher calling".
Predictably, the book has already evoked sharp responses. The PM's current media advisor, Pankaj Pachauri, dismissed the book "as an attempt to misuse a privileged position and access to high office to gain credibility and to apparently exploit it for commercial gains. The commentary smacks of fiction and coloured views of the former advisor". A later statement issued by the PMO said, "It is categorically denied that any PMO file has ever been shown to Shrimati Sonia Gandhi. The statement is...completely baseless and mischievous." Baru's response was a pithy, "I am amused. All I can say is that the statement could have been drafted better."
Much of what Baru — who served between 2004 and 2008 — has written has been long heard on the Capital's political grapevine, but this is the first time an insider has spilled the beans quite so candidly. On the question of a 'diarchy' or two power centres, Baru says there was no such confusion in Singh's mind. He quotes Singh as having told him, "I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party."
According to Baru, Singh shared a good working equation with finance minister P Chidambaram in UPA-I. He would insist that Chidambaram sit with him and finalize the budget speech. In contrast, his relationship with Pranab Mukherjee was far more formal. Mukherjee would apparently not even show Singh the draft of the budget speech till he had finished writing it.
The book also claims that Singh had tried to resist the induction of DMK's A Raja well before the 2G scam became public knowledge. "But after asserting himself for a full twenty-four hours, (he) caved in to pressure from both his own party and the DMK."
Baru claims that there was an eagerness to claim all social development programmes as the Sonia Gandhi-chaired National Advisory Council's initiatives, even though the Bharat Nirman programme came out of the PMO — drafted by the late R Gopalakrishnan, who was joint secretary.
He also claims that on September 26, 2007 — Manmohan Singh's 75th birthday — Rahul Gandhi led a delegation of general secretaries to wish him. Rahul wanted to extend NREGA to all 500 rural districts in the country. Baru sent a text message to a journalist that this was the PM's birthday gift to the country. When he was summoned by the PM, he apparently told Singh, "You and Raghuvansh Prasad (then minister for rural development) deserve as much credit." The PM snapped: "I do not want any credit for myself... Let them take all the credit. I don't need it. I am only doing my work."
The book also reveals that Singh had threatened to quit if the UPA buckled under Left pressure and had told Sonia Gandhi to look for his replacement. Even as rumours circulated that Pranab Mukherjee or Sushil Kumar Shinde might be considered as his replacement, the NCP backed him, with Praful Patel telling Baru they would not support anyone but "Doctor Saheb".
Sonia then reportedly asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, to convince the PM not to resign. She also visited Singh at his residence with Pranab Mukherjee. The government was then allowed to proceed with the deal.
However, such shows of resolve from Singh were not forthcoming in UPA-II. Baru cites his own case when the PM wanted to reappoint him as a secretary in the PMO in 2009. However, he had to drop the plan as he was told that the party was opposed to such a move. "To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM's display of spinelessness," writes Baru.
So where's the fiction?
PMO hits back at Sanjaya Baru over his book on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
Kaveree Bamzai New Delhi, April 11, 2014 | UPDATED 01:23 IST
Sanjaya Baru with Manmohan Singh in 2007.
Exactly what is the PMO objecting to?
1. Baru writes that Manmohan Singh told him that the party president is the centre of power. That "the government is answerable to the party". Is that fiction? Is the PMO suggesting that the PM is the centre of power. Congress president Sonia Gandhi will not be amused.
2. Baru writes that the PM had tried to put his foot down on the induction of A Raja of DMK well before the 2G scam became public knowledge, "but after asserting himself for a full twenty-four hours, caved in to pressure from both his own party and the DMK". Is that fiction? Then what is the truth? Was the upright PM happy to include Raja in his team?
Read: Excerpts from Sanjaya Baru's book 'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh'
Read: Excerpts from Sanjaya Baru's book 'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh'
3. Baru writes that Manmohan told him very clearly that he did not want him to project his image -- though Baru repeatedly told him that it was his job to do so. Is the PMO suggesting that Manmohan wanted to be promoted?
Our April 21, 2014 cover
4. Baru writes that Manmohan didn'ttrust his colleagues, especially Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and AK Antony. So why did Manmohan Singh devalue the Cabinet as an instrument of governance and start functioning through Groups of Ministers and EGoMs?
5. Baru writes that he offered 'unsolicited' advice to Manmohan that he fight the 2009 General Elections, either from Assam or Punjab. He writes that his wife Gursharan Kaur too was keen that it happen and agreed that she would be a good campaigner. Baru writes that the PM felt he was too frail for the rigours of campaigning. Does the PMO want us to believe there was another reason he was wary? If so what was it?
The PMO statement today says the prime minister told senior editors in October when they asked about the forthcoming revelations, that they should 'not believe all that he is saying'. Does that mean we should believe some of it, perhaps only the few high points such as when Manmohan Singh strikes an understanding with George Bush on the nuclear deal. Or perhaps when Baru says Manmohan did not know the deals that were done to ensure the support of the Samajwadi Party on the nuclear deal?
Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi at the release of the Congress poll manifesto
The book is a devastating and unflinching account of what went wrong in UPA 2 and how the seeds for it were sown in UPA 1. It shows how the diarchy was doomed from the start and that Manmohan Singh had no choice but to be in office but not in power, perhaps because he was genuinely loyal to the dynasty or because he felt he had no moral right to stake control. Or perhaps he just wanted to avoid the fate of his mentor PV Narasimha Rao. In one of the more shattering revelations of the book, Baru says Ahmed Patel approached him to speak to Rao's son upon his death to convey SoniaGandhi's message that she wanted his funeral rites to be in Hyderabad, not Delhi. Baru says he refused to carry the message but sure enough Rao's last rites were not held in Delhi.
There is no fate worse for a Congressman, however talented he may be, than to be erased from the history of the party.
Excerpts from Sanjay Baru's book 'The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh'
April 11, 2014 | UPDATED 20:11 IST
The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru
Since Manmohan Singh's PMO also included a special adviser, a novelty created to accommodate M.K. Narayanan, part of the NSA's turf, namely the area of internal security, was hived off to him.
J.N. 'Mani' Dixit was, without doubt, the dominant personality among the three (Narayanan, T.K.A. Nair and Dixit). His stature ensured that T.K.A. Nair was not quite the 'principal' secretary that many of his predecessors had been. Of course, Nair's immediate predecessor, the larger-than-life Brajesh Mishra, was more than just a principal secretary. I once jokingly remarked to Dr Singh that in Vajpayee's time the principal secretary functioned as if he were the PM, while in his case it was being said that the PM functioned like a principal secretary. This was a comment on Dr Singh's attention to detail, his involvement in the nitty-gritty ofadministration, his chairing of long and tedious meetings with officials, which Vajpayee rarely did. He ignored the remark, knowing well that it was also a taunt, drawing attention to the fact that Sonia was the political boss.
Nair was not Dr Singh's first choice for the all-important post of principal secretary. He had hoped to induct Vohra, who had given me news of my job. Not only was he a fellow refugee from west Punjab, now Pakistan, but both had taught in Punjab University and Vohra also went to Oxford, though some years after Dr Singh. Vohra even cancelled a scheduled visit to London to be able to join the PMO. Sonia Gandhi had another retired IAS officer, a Tamilian whose name I am not at liberty to disclose, in mind for the job. He had worked with Rajiv Gandhi and was regarded as a capable and honest official. However, he declined Sonia's invitation to rejoin government on a matter of principle-he had promised his father that he would never seek a government job after retirement.
Sanjaya Baru with Manmohan Singh in 2007
Always impeccably attired, Nair, small-built and short, lacked the presence of a Brajesh Mishra, whose striking demeanour commanded attention. He rarely gave expression to a clear or bold opinion on file, always signing off with a 'please discuss' and preferring to give oral instructions to junior officials such as joint secretaries and deputy secretaries. They would then be required to put those instructions on file as their own advice. It was classic bureaucratic risk aversion aimed at never getting into any controversy or trouble. Nair depended a great deal on Pulok Chatterjee, a joint secretary who had worked with both Rajiv Gandhiand Sonia, for advice on important policy decisions.
Pulok, like Nair, suffered from the handicap that his own service had never regarded him as one of its bright sparks. A serving IAS officer, he had never worked in any important ministry. He was inducted into Rajiv's PMO as a deputy secretary after having served as a district official in Amethi, his constituency in Uttar Pradesh, where he had caught Rajiv's eye. After Rajiv's death, he chose to work for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation where he did some worthwhile social development work. But this meant that he was not just outside government but completely identified with the Gandhi family. When Pulok returned to government, it was to work on the personal staff of Sonia Gandhi when she was leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the PM. Indeed, Pulok was the single most important point of regular contact between the PM and Sonia. He was also the PMO's main point of contact with the National Advisory Council (NAC), a high-profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi...
Even with its combined strength, I felt that the Nair-Pulok duo was not a patch on the magisterial Brajesh Mishra who ran Vajpayee's PMO with great aplomb. Even though he was a diplomat by training, Mishra, the son of a former Congress chiefminister of Madhya Pradesh, had politics in his genes and knew exactly what stratagems to adopt to strengthen the authority of the PM in a coalition government. His other great qualification, one that both Nair and Pulok lacked, was that he was a risk-taker. On critical occasions, Mishra was willing to push the envelope and take things forward on behalf of the PM. He established that reputation by taking the decision, along with Vajpayee, to conduct nuclear tests in May 1998 and declare India a nuclear weapons state. Mishra's stature consolidated and expanded Vajpayee's clout within the government.
***
'National Security Adviser became the effective boss of IB and R&AW'
PM declined to take daily briefings from intelligence chiefs
It was clear to me that Dr Singh shared a bond with him (Mani Dixit) that was never there between him and Narayanan. It seemed plausible that the latter had been inducted as the third leg of PMO leadership as a concession to Sonia. MK, or Mike, as his contemporaries called him, was the intelligence czar who had headed the Intelligence Bureau (IB), India's internal intelligence agency, under both Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. He earned his spurs by playing a role in the unseating of the first-ever democratically elected communist government in the world, E.M.S. Namboodiripad's ministry in Kerala, way back in 1957. He was director, IB, when Rajiv was assassinated. Narayanan's favourite line was, 'I have a file on you.' He used it, humourously, with ministers, officials, journalists and others he met, leaving them, however, with the uneasy feeling that he wasn't really joking. Indeed, Narayanan himself gave currency to the tales that circulated about his proclivity to snoop on everyone. He seemed to derive great pleasure in letting me know that he kept a tab on the credit-card spending of influential editors. On long flights in the PM's aircraft, he would regale us with stories about how various prime ministers had summoned him for information on their colleagues.
Sonia Gandhi at a party meeting on January 17
| M.KarunanidhiIt was Dr Singh who had negotiated the DMK's entry into the UPAwith M. Karunanidhi in January 2004 and had gone to great lengths to be deferential to him.As prime minister,Dr Singh always received Karunanidhi at the portico of 7 RCR, and not just at the door of his room, as was the norm with most other visitors. Whenever Karunanidhi sent an emissary with a message, Dr Singh would set aside all other work and meet the DMK emissary. This made the DMK feel they had a special equation with Dr Singh. After all, the DMK's friendship with Sonia was a relatively new one. In 1996, she had rejected P.V. Narasimha Rao's proposal that the Congress ally with the DMK rather than the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK); the former were known to be sympathisers of the LTTE, her husband's killers. |
***
'Active morality for himself, but passive morality for others'Manmohan turned a blind eye to corruption by his colleagues
Dr Singh's general attitude towards corruption in public life, which he adopted through his career in government, seemed to me to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others. In other words, he was himself incorruptible, and also ensured that no one in his immediate family ever did anything wrong, but he did not feel answerable for the misdemeanours of his colleagues and subordinates. In this instance, he felt even less because he was not the political authority that had appointed them to these ministerial positions. In practice, this meant that he turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of his ministers. He expected the Congress party leadership to deal with the black sheep in his government, just as he expected the allies to deal with their black sheep. While his conscience was always clear with respect to his own conduct, he believed everyone had to deal with their own conscience.
| Jairam RameshIn 2005, when he asked me whether I thought Jairam Ramesh should be inducted into government, I replied that Jairam ought to be more demonstrative of his loyalty to the PM if he wanted a berth in the ministry. I was taken aback when, a few days later, Montek Singh Ahluwalia took me aside at a Christmas party at journalist T.N. Ninan's house and asked me why I was opposing Jairam's induction... I am not aware of what transpired after that, but in the following month,January 2006, Jairam did get inducted as a minister of state in the commerce ministry. I was not surprised to learn that Jairam later called on Sonia's friend Suman Dubey and thanked him for the job. Politics is about power and patronage, and ministerial positions are won not just on the basis of competence but also in recognition of a politician's clout or loyalty to the leader. For Congress MPs, the leader to please was always Sonia.That Jairam's loyalty was only with Sonia became clearer within weeks of his becoming minister when he chose to embarrass the PM by leaking a letter that Sonia had written to Dr Singh cautioning him against pursuing an initiative he valued a lot-the free trade agreement with member countries of the ASEAN. |
But in UPA-2 when corruption scandals tumbled out, his public image and standing took a huge hit from which he was unable to recover because there was no parallel policy narrative in play that could have salvaged his reputation. In other words, there were no positive acts of commission that captured the public mind enough to compensate for the negative acts of omission for which he was being chastised.
***
'I do not want you to project my image'
PM let Rahul take credit for nREGA and UPA winning a second term
When the idea of a rural employment guarantee scheme travelled to the PMO from the NAC and the rural development ministry, it was received enthusiastically by Dr Singh, who was familiar with Maharashtra's early initiatives in this regard. As the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission in the 1980s, Dr Singh had studied this scheme and had been impressed by it. Hence, he was in favour of implementing this programme at the national level and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was nothing more than a variant of MEGS (Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme).
Rahul Gandhi at a road show at Kathpara village in Assam on February 26
| 'She has let me down'On October 12 , 2007, both Sonia Gandhi and Dr Singh spoke at the Hindustan Times Summit. She said the survival of the government took precedence over the nuclear deal and while the Congress would continue to try and win over the Left it would do nothing to force the issue and risk a break with the Left. In a pointed question, the newspaper's editorial director asked him,'You made a statement to a newspaper which was a bit out of sync with your persona and that started all the controversy. Do you think you overstepped a bit?' Dr Singh responded with uncharacteristic firmness,'I don't think I overstepped. I was responding to a public statement issued by the four Left parties and I don't think I overstepped. I am quite conscious of my responsibilities and what I should say and what I should not say.' He returned home deeply disappointed.As I took leave of him he asked me,'Who are the wise men around whom I can turn to for advice?' I said I knew only two wise men.One was my father, who happened to be in Delhi that day, and the other my guru, K. Subrahmanyam. 'She has let me down,'he said to both in the separate meetings he had with them, in a voice tinged more with sadness than anger. |
The Congress party's obsession with giving the entire credit for MGNREGA to the Gandhi family reached a point where it may have actually embarrassed the family. When I tried to correct that impression, I found myself in a spot of trouble. On September 26, 2007, shortly after he was appointed one of the party's general secretaries, Rahul Gandhi led a delegation of all the party general secretaries to greet Dr Singh on his birthday. After the courtesies and tea and dhokla were done with, the delegation settled down to a discussion on policy issues. At the end of the meeting, Sonia's poIitical secretary, Ahmed Patel, handed over a statement about the meeting, requesting me to release it to the press.
The statement claimed that Rahul Gandhi had urged the PM to extend the scope of NREGA (this was before it was named after Mahatma Gandhi and consequently became MGNREGA) to all the 500-odd rural districts in the country. Until then, it was being implemented only in 200 of the most backward districts. I told Patel that it was not the practice of the PMO to issue press statements on behalf of those who visited the PM, and that I would draft a statement of my own stating that a delegation of party general secretaries led by Rahul had come to greet the PM on his birthday. As for the political content of the statement, it was better, I suggested, that it came in a separate statement from the party office.
Later that evening, a senior political journalist (then) at the Indian Express, called me to find out if Dr Singh had accepted Rahul's suggestion and whether NREGA would now be extended to the entire country. I reminded him that the prime minister had already stated his commitment to doing so in his Independence Day speech the previous month, and that the PMO was in discussion on this very point with the ministries of rural development and finance.
That evening, all TV channels dutifully reported the Congress party's statement that Rahul had asked the PM to extend NREGA to the entire country, and the next morning's papers did the same. Only the Indian Express made the additional remark in its dispatch the next day that 'Sources said that this issue had been on the PMO radar even before Rahul's elevation to the party post. The Principal Secretary to the PM had already discussed the issue with officials from the Finance Ministry, Rural Development Ministry and Planning Commission almost two weeks ago.'...
| When the PM quitI called on Dr Singh at 3 RCR. Both he and Mrs Kaur were seated in the living room, each reading a book.That was such a familiar sight. I had seen them this way on innumerable occasions; just the two of them, reading together in companionable silence. When I asked him about Sonia's message, sent through Montek,Dr Singh confirmed that she was trying to persuade him to wait and not force the pace of events. I warned him that if he did not act now, the rest of his term would be wasted.The Left would smell victory and might even press for a change of prime minister. I reminded him that the Left had a track record of doing just that.They had claimed credit for replacing the 'pro-business'Moraji Desai with the 'pro-farmer' Charan Singh in 1978...Now they would claim credit, I warned him, for replacing 'neo-liberal'Manmohan Singh with 'secular'Arjun Singh,'Bengali'Pranab-the CPI(M) was essentially a Bengal party-or 'leftist' Antony, who was an old ally of the comrades from Kerala.Dr Singh laughed.'I am ready to go. Anyone of them can be made PM.Why not?' |
It later transpired that this SMS had made the rounds and reached the party leadership. One senior leader told a senior editor, 'What does Baru think? He thinks Doctor Saheb [Dr Singh] can win us elections? We have to project Rahulji's image and this kind of SMS does not help.'
When I heard this, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, I was summoned by the PM for a dressing-down. As I entered the antechamber of his room, Nair, Narayanan and Pulok were walking out. Noting that all three scrupulousIy avoided eye contact with me, I realized this was going to be serious. When I went in, Dr Singh was seated, arms folded and wearing an angry look.
'Did you send an SMS to journalists that the expansion of the NREGA is my birthday gift?'
I said I did, but half in jest... The PM sat stiff in stony silence. I broke the silence by adding, 'The party wants to give the entire credit for this decision to Rahul. But both you and Raghuvansh Prasad deserve as much credit.'
'I do not want any credit for myself,' he snapped. He was still red with anger.
'Sir, it is my job to project your image and secure the political credit due to you. Let the party do that for Sonia and Rahul. I have to do this for you.'
'No!' he snapped again. 'I do not want you to project my image.'
***
'So who is the architect of this victory?' the CNN-IBN reporter asked Prithvi (Prithviraj Chavan, now Maharashtra chief minister). '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!'
| Sonia GandhiThere was very little social contact between the families of the two leaders.Rarely, too, did Dr Singh's daughters or Sonia's children join the Congress president and the prime minister at social gatherings. On the odd occasion, Sonia would call on Dr Singh to discuss family matters. There were, after all, few family elders available to give her advice on things that may have bothered her in her personal life. I was aware that on at least one occasion she came to see Dr Singh to discuss her concerns about Rahul's personal plans. Following that conversation, Dr Singh invited Rahul for lunch and the two spent time together. |
| Rahul GandhiThe telecom issue came on the back of public criticism of the government's handling of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.The Games fiasco was waiting to happen. At one point ,Dr Singh tried to get Rahul Gandhi interested, suggesting to him that just as his father,Rajiv, had acquired both administrative experience and a reputation for good organisation when he took charge of the 1982 Asian Games, the younger Gandhi could also make good use of this opportunity. Rahul showed no interest. |
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 then Pakistan president Pervez 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 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.
***
'He did not want to become more popular with the media and the general public than Sonia'PM's low profile seen as a virtue in UPA 1 but criticised in UPA 2
Consequently, it was a relatively smooth ride with the media for Dr Singh in UPA-1. His problem always was that he did not want to become more popular with the media and the general public than Sonia. Whenever a TV channel or news magazine conducted an opinion poll and showed that his popularity, while rising, was a few notches below that of Sonia, he would feel relieved. 'Good,' he would say, with a mischievous smile. That defined the limit to his projection and brand-building.
Manmohan Singh with former US President George W. Bush at the White House in July 2005
***
'Pranab Mukherjee would "forget" to brief the Prime Minister on his meetings'Manmohan had no control over his Cabinet colleagues
| Amar SinghAfter all the hectic activity of the preceding days, Saturday,June 21 was a quiet day. I had lunch at home and was enjoying a siesta when my mobile phone rang.Afriend of the Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh was on the line. 'Mr Baru, I have a message for you,' he said.'My friend Mr Amar Singh is in hospital in Colorado. He wants you to tell the prime minister that American doctors are very good and they are taking good care of him. He is very happy there and he says Americans are such warm and friendly people, we should have good relations with them.' Later that afternoon, I met Dr Singh and conveyed what was clearly a political signal from Amar Singh. He had hinted, through this intermediary, at the Samajwadi Party's willingness to support Dr Singh on the nuclear deal... Months later Amar Singh would claim credit for getting the nuclear deal done...'So who do you think are the architects of the nuclear deal?'he asked me.Before I could reply, he added,'You will say George Bush and Manmohan Singh. Let me tell you, it was George Bush and Amar Singh.' |
I was taken aback. How could the foreign minister not have briefed the PM immediately on return? I suggested to him that he should summon the foreign minister and demand a briefing. I am not aware if Pranab was actually summoned or himself found time to drop in, but in any event, he visited the PM the next day. Similarly, Pranab would 'forget' to brief the PM on his meetings with the Left.
***
Pranab and A.K. Antony, as successive defence ministers in UPA-1, were reportedly not enthusiastic about a deal on Siachen, though Sonia had blessed the peace formula. The armed forces were ambivalent, with retired generals who had served in Siachen favouring a deal to end the agony of the troops serving in that inhospitable terrain, but serving generals not willing to trust Pakistan on a deal...
| Pervez MusharrafAfter watching the cricket match at Delhi's Ferozshah Kotla grounds, Dr Singh and Musharraf went to Hyderabad House for a formal conversation. Musharraf was in a great mood because Pakistan had got off to a good start. In fact, the President, who had apparently been informed by his staff that Pakistan was set to win (which it did in the end), began the conversation saying, 'Doctor Saheb, if you and I decide,we can resolve all our disputes before lunch and go back to watch the match.''General Saheb, you are a soldier and much younger,' replied Dr Singh to Musharraf,'but you must allow for my age. I can only walk step by step.'The septuagenarian economist and the sixty-one-year-old general walked their talk. Over the next two years, they outlined a roadmap for the resolution of the Kashmir issue based on Dr Singh's famous formulation that 'borders cannot be changed, but they can be made irrelevant.' |
To add to this, Dr Singh had to also contend with a declining quality of defence services leadership, which has since become all too visible. For me, the first sign of this decline was evident in the manner in which army chief General J.J. Singh dealt with the Siachen issue. In closed-door briefings, the general would say that a deal with Pakistan was doable, but in public he would back Antony when the defence minister chose not to back the PM.
I was never sure whether Antony's hawkish stance was because he genuinely disagreed with the Siachen initiative or whether he was merely toeing a Nehru-Gandhi family line that would not allow Dr Singh to be the one finally normalizing relations with Pakistan. After all the Kashmir problem had its roots in Nehru's policies.
***
'It is for the party to decide if I should contest'
Not contesting Lok Sabha polls denied PM political authority
I suggested to Dr Singh that now that the elections had been called, he should contest a seat in the Lok Sabha. If the party returned to power, he would be PM again, but this time, I argued, he should be in the Lok Sabha. Even if the party lost, he would at least have the satisfaction of ending his political career by winning a seat in the House of the Poeple. Ever since his defeat in the South Delhi constituency in 1999, which his family and friends suspected had partly been caused by internal sabotage by Congressmen, this had been a touchy topic.
I was convinced, even more than before, that the prime minister's decision not to return to office via the Lok Sabha was his biggest political mistake. The political authority and legitimacy that a second term in office offers a head of government was denied to him by his remaining a member of the Upper House and not securing for himself the imprimatur of a popular mandate. He could easily have said to Sonia that he would prefer to retire as PM than to once again return to the job from the Rajya Sabha. If she had refused him a safe Lok Sabha seat he could have gone into retirement on health grounds.
***
As UPA-2 began to unravel, another Mahabharata comparison came to suggest itself to some of Dr Singh's critics. For all his wisdom and strategic brilliance, and despite the enormous respect he commanded from both sides of a family at war, Bheeshma faced his most embarrassing moment when the hapless Draupadi asked him why he could not protect her when she was being disrobed. She mocks Bheeshma for seeking refuge in the finer points of dharma.
| George W. BushWhatever his political image, at a personal level Bush was warm and friendly. Being shy and a poor conversationalist, Dr Singh always relaxed in the company of men who were gregarious, and took an instant liking to Bush. When the two first met in New York in September 2004, Bush was deferential and, rather surprisingly for an American President, kept addressing Dr Singh as 'Sir'.By the time they met in Delhi in March 2006, the two had become buddies. Bush's gesture of placing his arm around Dr Singh's shoulder as the two walked towards the media was frowned upon by some Indian diplomats and journalists, who read it as a patronising one. But to me,watching from close quarters, he seemed to be treating Dr Singh like a 'buddy'in a natural sort of way. |
Like Greek epics and Shakespearean plays, Indian epics too have no untainted heroes. Leave alone mortals, even the gods have flaws; Lord Rama's treatment of Sita raises a question that has never gone away. There are questions that will probably haunt Dr Singh too, most of all: why did he not quit when he realised he had lost all vestiges of control over his own government? If his failure to do so arose from loyalty to the Congress or a promise to Sonia, it was misplaced-and unrewarded-loyalty. Except it enabled him to remain in office, even if not in power. His apparent commitment to ensuring Rahul's succession, perpetuating the Congress party's control by one family, was even more misplaced. That was Bheeshma's failure too: he should have put his foot down on the Kaurava succession. Moreover, promising loyalty to hereditary succession is a monarchical attribute, not a democratic one. That was Dr Singh's fatal error of judgement.
When Indira Gandhi lost in 1977, she fought back by campaigning long and hard. Sixty-two days and nights of travelling 1,000 km a day, addressing 10 meetings, which meant that she had been seen or heard byone in four voters.