Singh is (sin)Kinng

Anna Hazare’s fast might claim its most surprising victim yet - the one man who even his harshest critics call personally honest. Manmohan Singh has been accused of presiding over a government steeped in corruption, of not sacking the Kalmadis and Rajas when he should have, of being too reserved, too hesitant, too slow. As Ashok Guha writes in the Telegraph he “adopted as his role models the Japanese monkeys of legend who saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil”. “The credibility of the Indian state is in tatters,” warns Guha. But even he calls the PM “supposedly incorruptible”. But Singh’s weary “more corrupted against than corrupting” patina is wearing thin. The chorus of voices calling for his head begins to grow. On Sunday LK Advani launched his political salvo. “Dr Singh has not contested elections directly till now. At least now, the Prime Minister should quit the post and contest elections,” Advani told party workers in Nellore. Now he’s being echoed by the op-ed pundits. “To restore faith in the constitutional process some heads must roll in government,” writes Ramachandra Guha in the Hindustan Times. And Guha makes it clear that the PM’s head would be a good place to start. “It is time that Singh made way for a younger man or woman, for someone who has greater political courage, and who is a member of the Lok Sabha rather than the Rajya Sabha,” writes Guha. That stings, especially the dig at his age, given the movement is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and has its patron saint, the 74-year-old Anna Hazare. Singh’s one-time strength, that he was non-political, a sober man not into grandstanding, is now his liability as he confronts a tide of street politics. He is a Rajya Sabha man in Lok Sabha times. The Telegraph is equally blunt in its editorial stance. “What is bizarre in this situation is the impression conveyed by the government that no one is in charge,” it complains. The need of the hour, it writes is someone “who would firmly put his hand on the tiller to steer the ship of State.” Singh, it makes clear, is not that man. Arvind Panagariya, writing for the Times of India, is a little more generous. He lays the blame not so much on Singh’s turban as on the Congress high command and its alternative power centre, calling the shots but ducking responsibility. [caption id=“attachment_68207” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The Congress will pay for its flip-flops. Now they are damned if they accept the Jan Lokpal Bill and damned if they don’t. Manmohan Singh, as their leader, has a lot to answer for. Image courtesy PIB”]  [/caption] “While the Prime Minister struggles few have asked where the Congress high command stands on the Lokpal issue,” writes Panagariya. But all roads still lead to the same end. “The Prime Minister is losing the authority to govern,” he concludes. It is undeniable that the Prime Minister seems paralysed and at a loss for ideas, sending old-fashioned oddly courteous letters to Anna expressing his “deep and abiding concern” about his health – days after throwing the man into Tihar Jail in undue haste. But should he resign? The greatest complaint of the civil society types and the thinking class about the Anna movement is that he is hijacking democratic process, that this is blackmail by hunger strike. A few days ago Pratap Bhanu Mehta said it was time to step back:

Social pressure is important. The movement should also recognise that various other institutions of the state, from the opposition to independent bodies, have, albeit imperfectly, swung into action… All actors in the current system, whether it is the executive, courts, independent agencies or civil society, will serve society better by discharging their proper roles, not by extending their power on any pretext. We need a fine balance, not an insolent civil society or a tyrannical state.

Now the fine balance has tipped in Mehta’s own mind. And he too is having second thoughts.

No one is seeing the needless diminution in bringing the PM under the Lokpal because he is a reduced figure. Anna Hazare’s retort to the PM, “by whose authority do you govern?”, was not without bite. This has to be corrected, even at the cost of Manmohan Singh resigning.

What happened to all that breast beating about democratic process? Manmohan Singh, for all his failures, is a legally elected Prime Minister. There is no reason to believe that he has lost the confidence of his coalition or his party. He might be the most unpopular man in the country but he is not an autocrat, installed at the top by illegal means, who has to be toppled ala Tahrir Square. Even Ramachandra Guha acknowledges that during the Jayaprakash Narayan movement his close associate RK Patil worried about substituting the “law of ‘Government by Discussion’” by the “law of ‘Government by Street Opinion.’” As Prabhat Patnaik warns in the Hindu:

Even if a majority of the people genuinely wish at a particular time to elevate a messiah over Parliament, this is no reason to alter the constitutional order, just as a majority wishing to abandon secularism at a particular time is no reason to do so. The Constitution is the social contract upon which the Indian state is founded.

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The Congress will pay for its flip-flops. Now they are damned if they accept the Jan Lokpal Bill and damned if they don’t. Manmohan Singh, as their leader, has a lot to answer for. But his resignation could just give false sense of closure to a drama that is not about him at all. However watching him standing helplessly in the Lok Sabha the day after his government detained Anna, while the booing opposition drowned out most of his speech, one wonders if the thought of resignation does not sound like a relief to the beleaguered prime minister. The greatest strength of Anna Hazare’s movement was that he had made it about corruption not about any particular political figure. He for one had not asked for Manmohan Singh’s resignation, keeping his focus on his Jan Lokpal Bill. So who will be appeased by this piece of political sacrifice? The intellectual elite who were in a tizzy over Anna but equally unhappy with Singh’s inability to hold down the sweaty masses? Or the Congress sympathisers who need a sacrificial lamb to save their skins at the polls next time? Either way the question remains: Is Manmohan Singh really the biggest roadblock to an effective Lokpal Bill? Or is it not about corruption and the Lokpal Bill anymore?