DR. MANMOHAN ‘FAUSTUS’ SINGH P.M.

DR. MANMOHAN ‘FAUSTUS’ SINGH P.M.

It never fails to amaze me when reputed, erudite, and respected men of the media, like Mr. Shekhar Gupta keep turning into apologists for our Prime Minister, Shri Manmohan Singh. I have been observing this phenomenon ever since he was appointed the Minister for Finance by Narasimha Rao. In an instant he had been adopted by the media, who went to town extolling the virtues of this “humble” bureaucrat-turned-reluctant-politician. The media gave him the utmost consideration and found excuses for his sins of commission and omission, which are inevitable in political life. Manmohan Singh has been the darling of the press and never a harsh word is used when editorial and other comments are published.

So it hardly came as a surprise when I read Mr. Gupta’s NATIONAL INTEREST column in The New Indian Express of 5th March 2005 commenting upon the recent political events in Jharkhand, Goa, and Bihar. As regards the events in Ranchi, Mr. Gupta writes, and I quote: “I have personally heard from several cabinet ministers in deep embarrassment, and if our understanding of the prime minister’s style, personality and political beliefs is even halfway accurate, he really couldn’t be sleeping peacefully this week”.

Well, I have news for Mr. Gupta. The Prime Minister did not lose his sleep when the Harshad Mehta bubble exploded on the stock market during his finance ministership. Nor did he appear to have been sleeping less when he was asked to accommodate in his cabinet such unsavory characters as Taslimuddin, Shibu Soren, Lalu Yadav, and even a Jagdish Tytler. The ‘good doctor’ would have been willing to swear in even Sajjan Kumar if he had been asked to. No Mr. Gupta, your understanding of the prime minister’s style, personality and political beliefs is inaccurate to the utmost.

Dr Manmohan Singh is a highly ambitious man, who hides behind a mask of irrelevance, and pretends to be an innocent struggling in the maelstrom of national politics. Behind the mask is a shrewd mind playing his own game to keep the other contenders in his party, out of favour with the high-command. It is possible that before he tasted political power through the patronage of Narasimha Rao, Dr. Singh was an honest economist-bureaucrat, ploughing his furrow in sundry jobs with the Reserve Bank of India, the World Bank, and other institutions. But the day he made his ‘faustian’ bargain, he lost his innocence. As Dr. Faustus says:

“Oh, what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence
Is promis’d to the studious artisan!
All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: emperors and kings
Are but obey’d in their several provinces,….”

It is this power that both the good doctors “most desire”. And in order to achieve it they are willing to surrender their souls to the Devil; Dr. Faustus for twenty-four years, Dr. Singh for a possible four years. And yet, what did Dr. Faustus actually achieve in this bargain. Apart from some flying visits to the capital cities of Europe, disrupting the Pope’s feast in Rome, snatching from him a dainty dish sent by the Bishop of Milan, playing pranks on lowly-paid servants, getting off-season fruits delivered by spirits, and generally playing conjuring tricks on people, he has nothing of substance to show for his bargain.

Behind the façade of a reluctant prime minister is an ambitious man who like Caesar continues to refuse the crown while hankering after it the most. And our media continues to find ways to exonerate him and look for scapegoats elsewhere. It is easy to lynch the obvious “palace retainers” like Governors Sibtey Razi, S.C. Jamir, Ahmed Patel, even an Ambika Soni, and yet, find no fault with the chief retainer, the prime minister. Are we to believe that he is totally out of the loop in all political decisions of the Congress party? If so, then what is his contribution in all cabinet meetings that he presumably chairs? What does he discuss in his daily confabulations with the party president? If not politics, then what? And if he is so out of the loop, then why do we have him as our Prime Minister?

I tend to believe that our good doctor is so happy with his office, and the loaves and fishes that go with it, that he does not care what the other retainers are doing and is ever willing to do the bidding of his high command. For him is not to question “why”. If he had even an iota of that honesty which the media usually attributes to him, he would not have continued as a PM when he was asked to include Jagdish Tytler in his cabinet. A man who was at the forefront of the 1984 massacre of the Sikhs, is a minister in the cabinet of the first Sikh Prime Minister of India. It is not an act of forgiveness as we have witnessed in Mandela’s South Africa. It is an act of absolute ambition.

So, Mr. Gupta please do not lose your sleep worrying whether Dr. Manmohan Singh is able to sleep while all the political shenanigans are going on around him. The Doctor is not one to suffer from insomnia, although I suspect, he would welcome if he were to suffer from amnesia.