Manmohan Singh’s biography on the official website of the
prime minister of India says
about him: India’s
fourteenth Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh is rightly acclaimed as a thinker
and a scholar. He is well regarded for his diligence and his academic approach
to work, as well as his accessibility and his unassuming demeanour.
There is nothing much to decipher about Manmohan Singh.
There is nothing left to decipher about Manmohan Singh after his absolute fall from
the ‘high of the apolitical and honest brand name of 2004’, during his second
term as the prime minister of India.
Still, let’s see him and his integrity in the context of today’s
developments; an integrity that is more fragmented than ever before.
A television news channel broke the news at around 1:55 PM
that Manmohan Singh was studying the Supreme Court’s observations against his
government on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) affidavit on sharing
the Coalgate probe status report with the government and would later come up
with his response.
The Coalgate, a mammoth coal block allocation scam, in
making over the years but precipitated during the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA)’s regimes with maximum coal block allocations, is being probed by the
CBI. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in September 2012 involved the Supreme
Court in the ongoing case. In March this year, the SC asked the CBI not to
share the Coalgate investigation reports with the political executives.
And today’s observations by the SC that made the ‘thinker’
in Manmohan Singh to say that he was studying the apex court’s observations, is
just the tip of an iceberg that, no doubt given the developments in the case
till now, is going to throw big dirt on the sham of the UPA government and
Manmohan Singh when the CBI submits its detailed affidavit in the SC on May 6 furnishing
full details, naming persons and footnoting the changes describing the level of
intervention by the political executive (Manmohan Singh’s government) in
a clear case of vested interests and law-subversion.
But, beware, though you are already aware, that we are
going to have a similar response from Manmohan Singh even then, shirking every
responsibility, belittling the norms of democracy and shattering the notions of
personal integrity and political sanctity.
So, the ‘thinker’ in Manmohan Singh pushed him to
say, at 1:55 PM today, that he was studying the SC observations.
But the ‘scholar’ in him has got stuck somewhere in
the ‘thinking’ mode it seem as it is over nine hours, while writing
this, and we are yet to see what the studious assignment of Mr. Manmohan Singh has
resulted in as Mr. Manmohan Singh is yet to come out with his ‘observations’
on the SC observations directly questioning his moral grounds putting him and
his government in the dock. This all is happening on a day when there is a need
of immediacy in responding to the SC’s remarks.
It simply tells us Manmohan Singh doesn’t bother about
such questions of ‘moral sanctity’ and he is like any other politician of the political
class that just doesn’t care for the values of democracy.
The prime minister’s website describes his academic
credentials from Cambridge to Oxford but we need to find the source
institution where this sort of ‘scholarship’ is a norm making the
students immune to every criticism even if it is rightly targeted at them and intended
to push them to take the corrective measures.
It is not a sad and black day for Manmohan Singh. It is a
sad and black for the Indian democracy and its common man.
No politician is easily accessible in India. It
cannot be said what does the website mean by ‘well regarded for his accessibility’?
It has been written about a person who chooses not to speak when the whole
country expects him to speak on a day like this after the highest court of the
land makes scathing remarks against his government.
The country had expected in 2004 that the apolitical
Manmohan Singh would prove a genuine politician and would serve the country differently,
honestly. But all that is shattered now. Before becoming even a politician, he
drifted to become one among the insensitive political class mascots of the day.
On political level, even after today’s development in the
SC, nothing would move. Reports at the moment say that the government is firmly
behind the Minister of Law and Justice Ashwani Kumar who is the front of the
government’s manipulation machinery in the Coalgate probe by the CBI. Even on
April 26, when the CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had admitted in the apex court of
sharing the probe report with the political executives despite SC’s restrictive
orders, Manmohan Singh was very prompt in defending his minister saying there
was no question of his resignation.
The country had not expected this ‘diligence’ and
it is certainly not an ‘unassuming behaviour’.
He is at the centre of criticism. He has been at the centre
of whirlwind criticism. He is at the centre of political satire and jokes. His
silence and selective responses on the monumental corruption cases by the
colleagues of his government implicate him fairly. And this all is a well
established line of discussion now.
Once, reading stuff on Manmohan Singh like that in the
initial lines of his personal profile at his official website sounded good. But
who knew then that it was driven more by the perception of yore. It started
fizzling out as Manmohan’s term in the prime-ministerial office changed the
calendar dates with rising corruption of unimaginable scales.
Manmohan Singh is failing India. Manmohan Singh is failing
its common man.
Once, there was a perception called Manmohan Singh.