The Hindu Business Line : Who is the real Manmohan Singh?

Praised by supporters as a man with determination and unquestioned personal integrity, Dr Manmohan Singh's journey from economist to politician as been long and eventful.

IS THE Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, a pushover? Do his mild manners and his squeaky-clean reputation cover up a personality that is malleable and easily amenable to influence? Is it correct that he succumbs to pressure from his colleagues, if not his opponents? The answers to these questions would depend a lot on the side of the political fence one is sitting on.

Dr Manmohan Singh's critics would interpret his humility and his self-deprecating character as indications of weakness. His supporters, on the other hand, would argue that behind the timid façade is an individual with not just grit and determination, but a person whose personal integrity has never been questioned.

True, Dr Singh is a relative newcomer to politics. Despite decades of experience in dealing with various politicians, he did not enter politics until as late as June 1991, when the then Prime Minister, Mr P. V. Narasimha Rao. made him Finance Minister.

It is also true that Dr Singh never won an election to the Lok Sabha. The only time he contested the Lok Sabha election from the South Delhi constituency — in the September-October 1999 elections — he lost by roughly 30,000 votes to Prof Vijay Kumar Malhotra of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Dr Singh is the first Prime Minister who has never been elected to the Lower House of Parliament. (Although both Mr H. D. Deve Gowda and Mr I. K. Gujral were members of the Rajya Sabha when they served as Prime Ministers, they had been elected to the Lok Sabha.)

The Prime Minister's supporters would have us believe that his relative lack of political experience would serve him in good stead and that the country would benefit from the stewardship of a technocrat, a bureaucrat, an academic and a professional — Dr Singh has been all of these.

On the other hand, what cannot also be denied is that he would have to muster all the political skills at his command to manage a still-fragile coalition government that is dependent on support from the Left for its very survival.

While his critics have called him timid and over-cautious, his decision to devalue the Indian currency by a whopping 18 per cent against the dollar in the first three days of July 1991 earned him a place in the country's history books. So was his decision later that month to dismantle the infamous licence-control raj, virtually at one fell stroke.

One of his first controversial statements, made at a press conference on the day he assumed office as Finance Minister, was that it would be unrealistic to expect the government to roll back the prices of a host of commodities — a promise made in the election manifesto of the Congress party drafted under the supervision of Rajiv Gandhi.

As soon as Dr Singh's views on the subject were publicised, a section within his own party attacked him, after which he had to retract his words.

Even earlier, on a number of occasions, Dr Singh is understood to have stood by his word and not given in to political pressure. During his stint as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in the early 1980s, he had staunchly opposed the entry into India of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) against the wishes of a powerful group. He subsequently stated that his stand had been vindicated when the BCCI went under amidst a storm of negative publicity. (The bank did manage to enter the country later.)

It is known that Dr Singh had offered to put in his papers as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission after Rajiv Gandhi, who was then Prime Minister, had derogatorily described the Members of the Commission as a "bunch of jokers".

This statement was subsequently denied but it is said that it took quite a bit of persuasion to convince Dr Singh that he should not insist on quitting. Subsequently, Dr Singh is believed to have thankfully accepted the post of Secretary of the Geneva-based South Commission when an offer came from Kenneth Kaunda.

While he was with the South Commission and even earlier, during the 1960s, when he wrote the book Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth (Oxford University Press, 1964), Dr Singh was not exactly enamoured of the prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund towards developing countries.

Yet, this was the same man who tried valiantly to convince his political opponents that the IMF's 3-D prescription of `deflate, devalue and deregulate' was a bitter pill that was "necessary" for the revival of the economy as the government had just borrowed $5 billion from the IMF.

Even if Dr Singh was unsuccessful in convincing everybody that he had not capitulated to the IMF's conditionalities, the years that followed saw him try and restore some of the savage cuts that had been made to government spending on the social sector, especially education and health-care.

His critics among the Right as well as the Left had a completely different take on what took place. The Right-wing complained that the policy of so-called economic reforms had been abandoned while sections of the Left contended that the government could revert to populist economic measures since the foreign exchange crisis had blown over.

In July 1991, this correspondent had interviewed Dr Singh for the now-defunct Sunday magazine and had asked him to react to those who were claiming his timid personality had been suddenly transformed.

This is what he said: "I don't think it is at all true that I have been timid. One day, when the country's archives are prepared, people will know the truth. What I am saying now is what I have been saying ever since I came into the government. It is true that I have lived within the system and that I have not been successful in changing the system's thinking earlier. Go through what I have written in the Sixth Plan and Seventh Plan documents — I am saying the same things even today. Maybe I was not able to implement everything. But then I was just a small cog.

"When I came to the Finance Ministry in 1971, I wrote a paper called "What To Do With Victory" (that was when Indira Gandhi's popularity was at its peak). I had written at that time that all these controls in the name of socialism would not lead to growth but would strangle the impulses for growth. I had said that these controls would not reduce inequalities but increase them. I have not been timid. I have spoken my mind freely and frankly. But I've also served as a faithful civil servant. Even if I have been overruled, I have carried out the orders of my political masters."

Now that he is the political master of all in his government, will he listen to voices of dissent? During the same interview, I had asked Dr Singh in what manner his economic views had changed over the years.

He replied: "I used to be in favour of gradual change. But I look around the world and realise that time is not on our side. There has been a complete collapse of the command economies of Eastern Europe. This country will be marginalised if we don't move forward at a breathtaking pace. I'm convinced that if there has to be structural change, it must be done quickly. That's how my views have changed."

Reading these words today, I am struck by the fact that this is the same person who has repeatedly asserted that the Communists are "patriots" and one who has again made fashionable an oft-repeated dictum of yesteryear — that growth is meaningless unless it is accompanied by equity.

So, who is the real Manmohan Singh? Time alone will tell. The former Secretary of the South Commission or the gung-ho liberaliser? In at least one respect, he has been consistent over the decades: he has always believed that economic reform can never be sustained unless it has a human face.

(The author is Director, School of Convergence, New Delhi and a journalist with over 25 years of experience in various media — print, Internet, radio and television. He can be contacted at paranjoy@yahoo.com)

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