I have long held the opinion that Dr. Manmohan Singh will be viewed by history as the most influential man in post Independent India. To me the three prime ministers from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty do not even come close to matching the achievements, the impact and the influence Dr. Singh has had in shaping modern India. For me two of his biggest achievements are the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Nuclear deal. Like the liberalization, the effects of the nuclear deals will be known in the coming decades as India begins to fully meet the energy needs of its population and economy.
There is so much to Dr. Manmohan Singh's achievements that cannot be listed here without rehashing his Wikipedia entry. In a country where politics is dominated by all sorts of undesirable elements, here is a guy who is the most educated prime minister in our short history. He is more educated than all the other contemporary world leaders around. He is not a career politician, he has decades of real administrative experience spending much of his life in the Indian bureaucracy. Among the many posts he has held, he has been the Finance Secretary, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Governor of RBI before becoming the country's Finance Minister and eventually Prime Minister. Above everything else he is known and perceived to be a man of impeccable integrity.
These and for many other reasons it is painful to see my favorite Prime Minister preside over a government embroiled in many controversies and allegations of scams, with ex-ministers spending time in jail. This is after all a second term for Dr. Singh, the Congress and other UPA constituents. It was the Left parties that held back the first government from disinvestments, from pursing better relations with the U.S and objecting to the nuclear deals. The people gave a resounding answer to the Left objections by wiping them out; by taking them out of the equation for UPA's second term. Finally I thought, Manmohan Singhji would be allowed to move ahead with much need reforms without political pressure.
Since then UPA-II has been busy firefighting all the time. instead of steaming ahead They had to face the CWG scam and the 2G scam costing the country astronomical sums of money if you go by the CAG reports. Add to this is their perceived reluctance to implement a strong Lok Pal bill that can potentially be a strong deterrent against scams of such scale.
I once read/listened to explanations from the Congress party and Dr. Singh about coalition compulsions. What I understood from all the beating around the bush was that the government will be a minority without its allies and therefore when an ally is found to be engaging in hanky-panky stuff, then coalition politics mandates you look the other way. It made sense to me actually. General Elections cost lakhs of crores of rupees and months of election drama with no guarantee of throwing up a stable government. So we have to deal with what we get in a multi-party election system and a population of a billion and more. For the sake of argument let us agree that the UPA had little choice in the matter when it came to Raja and co.
What I do not understand is what coalition compulsions forced the government to continue with Suresh Kalmadi as chairman of CWG Organising Committee (OC)? The stink associated with CWG rose much before the CWG got underway. It was missing deadlines, it had substandard construction in some places and material had been purchased at exorbitant rates. The government though continued with him. What was the compulsion? The only plausible answer is that by the time the government came to know what was happening, it had little choice but to bail Mr. Kalmadi and see that the CWG went through. The pride and the honour of the country was at stake.
Above all where the UPA-II government failed the people of this country is by sticking to the perception that they are not serious about tackling corruption. They have failed to convince me and millions others that they can stem the rot. That they do not have the political will to weed out the Kalmadi's from the system nor the will to stop their allies from doing what they want. My greatest regret is that presiding over this entire mess is my favorite but unfortunately very silent Prime Minister masterfully practicing the art of coalition politics.
There is so much to Dr. Manmohan Singh's achievements that cannot be listed here without rehashing his Wikipedia entry. In a country where politics is dominated by all sorts of undesirable elements, here is a guy who is the most educated prime minister in our short history. He is more educated than all the other contemporary world leaders around. He is not a career politician, he has decades of real administrative experience spending much of his life in the Indian bureaucracy. Among the many posts he has held, he has been the Finance Secretary, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Governor of RBI before becoming the country's Finance Minister and eventually Prime Minister. Above everything else he is known and perceived to be a man of impeccable integrity.
These and for many other reasons it is painful to see my favorite Prime Minister preside over a government embroiled in many controversies and allegations of scams, with ex-ministers spending time in jail. This is after all a second term for Dr. Singh, the Congress and other UPA constituents. It was the Left parties that held back the first government from disinvestments, from pursing better relations with the U.S and objecting to the nuclear deals. The people gave a resounding answer to the Left objections by wiping them out; by taking them out of the equation for UPA's second term. Finally I thought, Manmohan Singhji would be allowed to move ahead with much need reforms without political pressure.
Since then UPA-II has been busy firefighting all the time. instead of steaming ahead They had to face the CWG scam and the 2G scam costing the country astronomical sums of money if you go by the CAG reports. Add to this is their perceived reluctance to implement a strong Lok Pal bill that can potentially be a strong deterrent against scams of such scale.
I once read/listened to explanations from the Congress party and Dr. Singh about coalition compulsions. What I understood from all the beating around the bush was that the government will be a minority without its allies and therefore when an ally is found to be engaging in hanky-panky stuff, then coalition politics mandates you look the other way. It made sense to me actually. General Elections cost lakhs of crores of rupees and months of election drama with no guarantee of throwing up a stable government. So we have to deal with what we get in a multi-party election system and a population of a billion and more. For the sake of argument let us agree that the UPA had little choice in the matter when it came to Raja and co.
What I do not understand is what coalition compulsions forced the government to continue with Suresh Kalmadi as chairman of CWG Organising Committee (OC)? The stink associated with CWG rose much before the CWG got underway. It was missing deadlines, it had substandard construction in some places and material had been purchased at exorbitant rates. The government though continued with him. What was the compulsion? The only plausible answer is that by the time the government came to know what was happening, it had little choice but to bail Mr. Kalmadi and see that the CWG went through. The pride and the honour of the country was at stake.
Above all where the UPA-II government failed the people of this country is by sticking to the perception that they are not serious about tackling corruption. They have failed to convince me and millions others that they can stem the rot. That they do not have the political will to weed out the Kalmadi's from the system nor the will to stop their allies from doing what they want. My greatest regret is that presiding over this entire mess is my favorite but unfortunately very silent Prime Minister masterfully practicing the art of coalition politics.
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