The context for such a gathering of men in white
The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has been one heck of a disappointment. Maybe like Seinfeld, he ought to have called it quits when he was ahead--when the country and the rest of the world was all praise for him for having initiated the economic reforms back in the 1990s. After his first term as the PM, Singh should have walked away. Instead, and increasingly, he seems to behave like a hostage to his captors and comes across as if he suffers from a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Caravan has a lengthy feature on how much Singh has fallen:
“The fall has been so dramatic,” said a former Union Cabinet minister who has known Singh since the 1960s. “There is a visible drift, without any direction, and he appears to be helpless. People will say that of course he is an honest man and nobody doubts his personal integrity, but when you are presiding over an outfit that is dealing in corruption, you have to answer for that. How do you defend it? You can’t defend it.”
“Just look at the cartoons,” the former minister continued. “He is shrinking in size every day. He must be feeling awful.”
I bet I am not the only one who wonders why Singh is holding on to this job. Is it simply a case not wanting to let go of the power and prestige that comes with the highest elected office in India? Is Singh like how Nehru was during his final years of his life and in office--distant and drifting away into his own world and shutting himself from recognizing the obvious?
A more significant question for Manmohan Singh is whether it will come to colour future considerations of his prime ministership and even his legacy. His reputation for honesty may remain intact, but the course of this particular scandal—and a host of others that have transpired under his watch—suggests that honesty alone is an insufficient defence in crises that demand more from leaders than personal decency. It has been Manmohan Singh’s misfortune to run the country at a moment of proliferating corruption, which has had the unfortunate effect of highlighting his own inability or disinclination to confront it.
Manmohan Singh himself does not symbolise corruption in the way that he has become an emblem of liberalisation and Americanisation, and even if many call his government the “most corrupt” India has ever seen, that record may yet be broken. But the debate over corruption is not really about scandals and bribes, or about the devious schemes of amoral persons inside and outside of government: it is about the increasingly common fear that the system itself is broken, and about the inaction and apathy of those who should be positioned to lead in its repair.
Sigh!
Chalk it as how India yet again squandered a golden opportunity.
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