"Get me the number of Prof. Manmohan Singh", PV Narasimha Rao ordered his PA. His PA didn't know the number. Rao said,"I want him to be called in 10 minutes. Find out from wherever, he teaches at Delhi University." PA found his number by dialling some contacts and connected Dr Singh to Narasimha Rao.
It was 6 am. And Rao came on line to speak to Dr Singh. "Kya Professor Saheb. Bacchon ko Padhaare kyaa? Can you meet me at 9am today?" Dr Singh spoke in monosyllables of "yes" or "no" right from then. He said "yes" to Narasimha Rao's request. The meeting turned into one of India's most dramatic inflection points. For the first time, an RBI Governor whose signature appears on a one rupee note becomes India's new Finance Minister - and the rest has earned both Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh a place in history books. The duo alongwith a few other hand-picked talents took decisions that transformed the economic landscape of India forever.
Dr Singh credited most of his success and boldness of decision-making to Rao's unflinching support. But when the time came for Rao to bid a goodbye to this world amidst unprecedented machiavellian drama and back-stabbing, Dr Singh, as per reliable sources did not even visit the hospital ward of Narasimha Rao before he passed out. For all the talk of "structural adjustments with a human face", Dr Singh didn't have the courage to bypass Sonia to even call on a person who he always called as his mentor.
Twenty years after Narasimha Rao cherry-picked Singh to India's most prestigious Ministerial portfolio, Dr Singh did a similar gesture in beckoning Dr.Raghuram Rajan to India, to test his erudition, prescience and academic brilliance in the laboratory of the Monetary Policy at RBI. History will judge Dr Singh in different light than the judgements passing on him now in the heat of the bittermost election just as history now sheds kinder light on Narasimha Rao's Prime Ministership long after the suitcase scams and JMIM bribery cases faded into oblivion.
While individual achievements in academics, intellectual prowess and the body of contribution to Economic thought-leadership besides the economic reforms unleashed as FM will take many more years to deep-mine, his ascent to Prime Ministership has been his finest hour and most fallible moment. If you take the history of most Congress Prime Ministers outside of Gandhi dynasty annointed by a demagogic group of politicians, then Manmohan Singh has taken the brunt of brinksmanship and blindmanships all on himself unlike the rest. Guljarilal Nanda was always a standby PM. Whereas Lal Bahadur Shastri actually broke the back of Indira Ganshi to the point of almost driving her out of India to London because he took no nonsense from anyone, least of all encourage the nepotistic ways of Indira Gandhi. That leaves Narasimha Rao alone who took on the most umbrageous steps of taming the Gandhi parivar, taking baby steps and later giant strides to thwart the dynastic rule in its shameless march. He was checkmated by a confederacy of dunces and a conspiracy of sycophants. That must have played out heavily in the mind of Dr Singh as he took on the role of 'The Accidental Prime Minister'. He became silent and abrogated the responsibility of the chair of Prime Ministership by being blind to all that is happening under his ecosystem.
He may have avoided the wrath of Sonia and the party colleagues but by becoming a Bakra for someone else's surreptious ways and ruthless pursuit of power without accountability, Dr Singh has earned only shame and sympathy in his last few years. It could be a "Saturn" dasa but his redemption in history can only come after time obliterates his scam-ridden second innings from public memory. If the price of silence to unbridled corruption and loot of national wealth is a tenure to India's third longest-serving Prime Ministership, Dr Singh has earned his place too in history books in more roles than what any son of a humble upbringing could have got. For that, Manmohan Singh gets my toast tonight. If only his personal integrity and scholarship and his crisis-management during the tumult of 1991 and again in 2008 had got a better say than his conscience which remained a mute spectator to the misdeeds of Congress, he would have slept better tonight.
Dr Singh's story reminds me of the quote which sums up what happens when you don't speak your mind:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
A sad story. But as I said, history will judge Dr Singh better than what clouds our recent memory of his achievements.
