Anant Rangaswami
There is little or no role that the President of India plays, bar the few occasions on which he or she shows dissent by sending a bill back for reconsideration. While Pranab Mukherjee has done little to manage the finances of the economy, his contribution to the Congress party and to the UPA as an erudite spokesperson is immeasurable. He speaks with a great deal of self-assurance, has data at the ready, and comes across as honest and committed. How does the UPA replace him? There is no other credible spokesperson in the Congress; all others come across as arrogant, shallow, under-confident and lacking in knowledge. Forget the presidency; Pranab could contribute much more to the party – and there is little use for his skills in the presidency. read less read more
Venky Vembu
The notion that Pranab Mukherjee would be wasted in the Presidency presumes that his services as Finance Minister - or as the Congress' go-to person in times of political crises - have been invaluable. But in fact, Pranab-da has been a disaster on both counts. His elevation to the Presidency - should it come about - will only be a case of shuffling warm bodies from Point A to Point B. As Finance Minister, he - and the All Star economic team that the UPA boasts of - oversaw the Indian economy's systematic slide to its slowest pace in years. Worse, despite every straw in the wind indicating that the engines of the economy were shutting down, Pranab-da was in complete denial, and kept mouthing meaningless platitudes of an early return to 9 per cent growth - without doing anything to achieve it. He has colossally misread the economic and credit environment, overshot his deficites, and delayed supply-side interventions to the point where the RBI's fight to tame inflation has been severely compromised. Today, Mukherjee is reduced to firing blanks to revive the economy since he no longer has the elbow room for any stimulus. And at precisely the time when global liquidity flows were drying up, Mukherjee has resorted to an extraordinary taxation effort (with retrospective effect) to bludgeon foreign investors and force them to flee. India has to go back a decade or more to remember a more disastrous Finance Minister. On another front, Pranab-da gets a lots of high praise for being the "crisis manager" of the Congress. Much is made of his political sagacity and the goodwill he enjoys across the political spectrum. But even this doesn't count for anything: he was not able to persuade even his allies (much less the Opposition) to support any of the key reform proposals his government tentatively initiated. In fact, far more of his time and energey was expended in beating back backstabbers within his own government. Pranab's elevation - should it come about - merely symbolises a milestone in his personal journey. The nation (or even his party) will shed no tears over the vacuum he leaves behind in the Finance Ministry. If anything, kicking him upstairs holds out the feeble hope that it will create the space for a halfways-decent reform-minded person to take over. read less read more
