‘I met Dr Manmohan Singh only once but felt his presence on more occasions’

By Anil Swarup-

Anil Swarup

(Anil Swarup is a former Education Secretary and Coal Secretary in the Government of India. He is also a renowned author. The views expressed in this article are his own)

“You don’t have to be necessarily tall to be tall. It is the depth that matters. You then leave indellible footprints behind you”. This was my immediate thought when I heard about the sad demise of a stalwart and this is what I posted on the social media. When I had penned down my last book, “Encounters with Politicians”, I had written a brief chapter on Dr Singh as well.

I met and interacted with Dr Manmohan Singh only once but I felt his presence on more occasions than one. Dr Singh was Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission in late 1980s and he was on a visit to Uttar Pradesh. A field visit had been organized for him. In those days almost every VIP from Delhi paid visit to Sultanpur District that had Prime Minister’s constituency, Amethi. He was also to visit a Primary Agriculture Credit Society (PACS) in a village. In my capacity as Additional Registrar, Cooperative Society, I was looking after such PACS all over the state. We had taken a few initiatives to rejuvenate PACS as they played a critical role in agriculture production by way of providing credit, fertilizer, seeds and pesticides. As a part of my duty on the day Dr Singh was around, I had to accompany him in his car for a short while. I used this opportunity to explain to him what we were attempting to do. He appeared pretty impressed with what he heard and saw. He even took the trouble to write to the state government later appreciating the initiatives that were being taken. I found in him a very perceptive man, a patient listener and pretty sharp.

Dr Manmohan Singh went on the become the Finance Minister and was instrumental in transforming the economic landscape of the country. He came to be admired, deservedly so, within and outside the country for what he managed to achieve in extremely challenging set of circumstances. However, the same cannot be said when he became the Prime Minister of the country later on for two successive terms. The control that he had over the economy as he unshackled it, was apparently missing when he was the Prime Minister. I didn’t have the occasion to interact with him as Prime Minister but I felt his presence (absence would be a better way to describe it) on two different occasions.

A number on Ministers in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) were going berserk. There were scams breaking out every other day and there were allegations of corruption being levelled against a number of Minsters. Dr Singh appeared helpless. He later on justified his “indifference” by calling it “coalition dharma”. It was indeed tragic. Here was an honest man feeling totally helpless. He was an economist par excellence but he lacked qualities to control the ‘upstarts’ in his government. In my view, he wasn’t a politician and shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

As head of the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) in the Cabinet Secretariat I was tasked with fast-tracking projects each of which had an investment of Rs 1000 crore or more. Given the inhibiting environment in 2013, this was a difficult task. However, on account of the approach adopted, it started delivering results but files relating to environment and forest clearances for the projects were stuck at the level of the concerned Minister. The investment value of these projects was around Rs 54,000 crore. It was rumored that the Minister was sitting on the files because there was a demand for “speed money”. Exasperated at the delays, I sent notes to my boss, the Cabinet Secretary requesting him to take it up with the Prime Minister.  It was evident that both he and the Prime Minister were helpless against a ‘marauding’ Minister. The Minister was finally shown the door but only when apparently the message reached the High Command. And, the Prime Minister was not the High Command.

The second instance of feeling the ‘absence’ of Dr Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister was when he disowned the responsibility in the alleged irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks. Those who have some idea of how the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) functions will know that each file is examined at length in the office by different level of officers before it is put up for the approval of the Prime Minister. To say that the Prime Minister was misled on the issue of allocation and to use it as an excuse was inexplicable.

Dr Manmohan was undoubtedly an accomplished economist, a successful Finance Minister, extremely pleasant in his demeanor but not cut out for politics.