The Defense Rests

An interaction with Dr.Sanjaya Baru who is in Goa for the Marathi Launch of the book the accidental Prime Minister, as a curtain raiser for the annual Goa Art and literary festival http://www.goaartlitfest.com/
Dr.Baru the Geo-economist, who is an Indian political commentator and policy analyst. Has authored the non-fiction best-seller The Accidental Prime Minster.”
“My daughter who belongs to the sms generation asked me how could I work for someone like Manmohan Singh? The book is my answer to her” says Dr.Baru, it is an excellent defence for Mr.Manmohan Singh.
“There is a fundamental change in the thinking of people worldwide, we are lucky that our country chooses to do it with democracy,” was his observation. Dr.Baru, talked of 2004 where the nation disillusioned by the coalition govt. Headed by Mr.Vajpayee was voted out in favour of the congress party. It was then that Mrs. Gandhi looked for a person of impeccable integrity and presence without being a persona in his or her own right. Thus Mr.Manmohan Singh became the accidental prime minister as he confessed. The congress party then delivered too; there was a 9% growth. And the next election the party was voted back. Of course the voters were mostly urban Indians.
So what went wrong?
Do you remember? That Mr.Manmohan Singh was the face of the 2009 election campaign of congress? People voted Manmohan Singh’s leadership and not really the congress party. The first step that went off was Mr. Singh opted for the Rajya Sabha route instead of the Lokasabha.
Nine years of congress party’s reported card, showed 9 major scams like the coal scam — 2012, the 2G scam—2008, the chopper scam—2012, the Tatra truck scam –2012, common wealth games scam 2010, cash for vote 2011, adarsh 2012, IPL scam 2013, satyam scam—2009 , no matter how impeccable personal integrity the tenure went down as the “Manmohan Singh govt.”
The actual decapitation occurred with Mrs. Gandhi’s manoeuvres to shift the face of congress from Mr.Manmohan Singh to Mr.Rahul Gandhi, it was not only ungraceful and obvious, it was also demeaning to a man of Mr. Singh’s stature.
Why did he not put his foot down, after all he did in the case of the nuclear deal…?
That Dr.Baru did concede was an interesting question, particularly since he was in the know of what was happening so his silence would implicate that he was party to it.
Yet when the head of the state is not the head of the party there is a dual power issue. It existed between Nehru and Kripalani. Acharya Kripalani would insist that Nehru kept him informed of the government moves, JyothiBasu reported each day to the party president before he wound up for the day until the gentleman passed away. It was the party president who is real power, until Mrs. Gandhi roughshod the then president and the Prime minster became the power centre.
Dr.Baru was talking about the nation being at the helm of the launch of the second republic, the first one being the Nehruvian republic (1950-2014). The change is definitely visible. The reason that he cites is the aging regional parties, making it difficult for their heirs to continue the legacy. There is a fundamental change among people and this change is forever, as he commented we are lucky that our country chooses to do it democratically and not with violence like we see in other countries.
About the issue of corruption he said, it is no doubt there, and will be there it exists even in china and US, but would be essential is to focus on education, health and city building and there would be no stopping us from being a super power by 2050, but the time frame is not earlier than that.