2014: The Election That Changed India (15 page)

The first intimate meeting I had with Dr Manmohan Singh was on the eve of the 1999 general elections when he was made to contest a Lok Sabha election for the first time, from South Delhi. He had already built an impressive reputation as an economist who as finance minister had delivered the historic 1991 Union budget that had opened up the Indian economy like never before. But here he was being asked to garner votes, a completely different challenge. My assignment at NDTV was to spend a day with Dr Singh on the campaign trail. I was fascinated with the prospect of a middle-class professional academic-bureaucrat who had spent much of his life reading books and files now attempting to transform himself into a mass leader.

We started early in the morning, read a vast bundle of newspapers and went on a walk together. Dr Singh was filing his nomination that day, so he had to climb on a large truck encircled by muscular Sardars and the local Congress workers. His doughty wife Gursharan Kaur kept a safe distance, only ensuring that her ‘Sardarji’ had eaten a good breakfast and the kurta–pyjama was well starched. I remember asking him later in the evening what the most difficult thing was about trying to be an MP. His answer with a mild smile was, ‘Being pushed around by so many people. Everyone, it seems, wants to shake your hand!’

My lasting memory of that day spent with Dr Singh came in our post-lunch shoot. Dr Singh wasn’t the most spontaneous or voluble guest in front of the camera, so we were keenly looking for some ‘colour’ that would lift our programme. We found out that it was the birthday of one of his grandchildren and a small party had been organized on the lawns at the back of the house. Dr Singh, we were told, would spend some time with the children while the cake was being cut. ‘Ideal TV image,’ said my cameraperson enthusiastically. ‘We can give a human touch to the show.’ Unfortunately, the moment I broached the idea of filming the birthday party, both Dr Singh and wife shook their heads sternly in unison. ‘The birthday is a private affair, no cameras please!’ I tried to reason that as an aspiring MP, the lines between the private and the public were now blurred, but to no avail. The Singhs were determined to zealously guard their family life.

Dr Singh lost that South Delhi election to the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra by a little over 29,000 votes. He never contested a Lok Sabha election again. And yet, by a remarkable quirk of fate, this intensely private, soft-spoken Sardar became prime minister five years later. A nation-building intellectual of the 1960s, Manmohan Singh was part of a generation that had been the frontiersmen of ‘Nehruvian’ modernity. Indira Gandhi had sought his counsel as well, and he was acknowledged as a highly competent scholar-bureaucrat. Sonia Gandhi had chosen him ahead of all other contenders because she trusted him and, equally importantly, respected him as a man
of high personal integrity. Initially, the decision to anoint Dr Singh as prime minister appeared to catch everyone by surprise, except the renowned Oxford scholar and guru of psephology, Sir David Butler. Sir David had known Dr Singh since his Oxford days, and was in India to observe the elections. ‘You know, he will make an ideal prime minister in a coalition government in India, the kind of man who will offend no one but will quietly get the job done,’ was his sharp analysis.

In the first five years of the UPA government, it appeared that Sir David’s assessment was near perfect. The ‘accidental politician’, as Dr Singh often described himself, proved to be an artful one too, cleverly negotiating the minefield of a government dependent on several allies. I sometimes met him in those early years in 7, Race Course Road, courtesy his proactive media adviser, Dr Sanjaya Baru. Dr Singh was unfailingly warm and polite. Power, it seemed, had not changed him a bit. Even the family, mercifully for an Indian politician, stayed away from the lure of office, exuding a no-nonsense feet-firmly-on-the-ground air.

When the Indo-US nuclear deal threatened to torpedo his government, with the left warning of a pull out, I was tipped off by a Congress source that the prime minister had talked tough and even offered his resignation to Sonia Gandhi. The breaking news story we did had several sceptics who were unconvinced the mild-mannered prime minister would dare Mrs Gandhi to remove him. The story, though, was later confirmed, and the gambit worked. Even as the left withdrew support, Sonia Gandhi and the party rallied around Dr Singh. Eventually, the Samajwadi Party bailed out his government. In the election that followed, the voter rewarded Dr Singh’s clear-cut stand. UPA-II was created with a much stronger majority. And yet, in his moment of political success, Dr Singh would make his first major mistake as prime minister and reveal himself to be a political survivor who preferred compromise to conviction.

Dr Manmohan Singh was sworn in as India’s prime minister for a second time, on 22 May 2009, along with nineteen ministers. Absent from the ceremony was a key UPA ally, the Tamil Nadu-based Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Their absence at the swearing-in became a major talking point. M. Karunanidhi, we were told, was incensed that he was not being allowed the ministers and portfolios of his choice. The prime minister’s office had leaked the story that Dr Singh was unhappy with the performance of the DMK ministers in his first government, especially T.R. Baalu’s and A. Raja’s, both of whom were accused of corruption. ‘The DMK wants “wet” ATM ministries!’ was the joke in the corridors of power.

As the prime minister revealed a muscular refusal to bend, a worried Congress party decided to send senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and the national security adviser M.K. Narayanan to Chennai to negotiate with the DMK supremo. Karunanidhi was equally unrelenting. ‘I must have the right to choose my ministers and portfolios. Raja comes from a Dalit family, we cannot remove him.’ When the negotiators tried to broach the issue of corruption allegations, the DMK leader reportedly shot back, ‘Who is the Congress to talk about corruption? You people even protected Ottavio Quattrocchi (a reference to the Italian businessman and Bofors accused who was close to the Gandhi family)!’

Keen not to lose a key ally, the Congress buckled. With Sonia Gandhi giving the go-ahead, the prime minister gave up. On 28 May, three Cabinet ministers of the DMK were sworn in. The list included Mr Raja who was given the prized telecom ministry once again, the very portfolio that the prime minister didn’t want to give him. Dr Singh had conceded the fight. He would pay a heavy price for the concession.

Eighteen months later, Raja was forced to resign after a report of the CAG accused him of not distributing 2G spectrum in a transparent manner, resulting in an alleged loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer. A few months later, he was arrested. Raja was a feisty character. A lawyer-politician from the Nilgiris, he exuded a
certain political machismo. Days before he was arrested, I had a hearty south Indian breakfast with him, trying to convince him to do an interview. He sounded defiant, even as he munched on his dosa. ‘If they arrest me, I will expose everyone. The prime minister, the finance minister—they all knew what was happening, why am I being singled out?’ he asked angrily.

Till then, Manmohan Singh’s calling card had been his spotless track record of personal probity. In his long career in public life, there had never been an accusation that the prime minister had engaged in, or winked at, corruption. The 2G case noticeably changed that. A series of letters emerged in the public domain suggesting that the prime minister was aware in 2008 itself that Raja was subverting the spectrum allocation process, possibly for personal benefit, but that Dr Singh had asked, in the words of one such communication, ‘to be kept at arm’s-length’.

PMO sources claimed that this was the reason why the prime minister had not wanted Raja in his Cabinet again. The fact, though, is that Raja continued as telecom minister for almost two years after the controversial 2G spectrum allocation. Dr Singh could have acted against him but chose the path of least resistance. He had failed to exercise prime ministerial authority and had revealed a weakness to place personal survival over principled politics. If the Indo-US nuclear deal had boosted his image, 2G undermined it, perhaps irretrievably. For the first time, Opposition benches trained their guns on the chief executive himself, crying out that Dr Singh’s white kurta was stained with the taint of tolerating corruption. An entire Parliament session would be stalled over the issue.

Leading the charge against the government on 2G was Dr Subramanian Swamy, keen to resurrect his political career. Dr Swamy claimed to be a personal friend of Dr Singh, but had a visceral hatred for Sonia. Evil genius or brave crusader, he was not someone you wanted to make an enemy of. Once, when we cancelled him from a studio debate at the last minute, he warned me, ‘Sonia Gandhi must have told you not to have me in the programme. I will expose you on Twitter!’ A meticulous gatherer of allegedly incriminating material
against his rivals, Dr Swamy took the 2G battle to the courts and made it even more difficult for the UPA-II government to try and distance itself from Raja.

It wasn’t just Raja who became synonymous with corruption—there was also the figure of Rs 1.76 lakh crore that stuck in the public imagination. ‘Ten zeroes’ appeared to suggest that corruption had multiplied ten times, and led to a flurry of jokes on the Internet and social media. The figure seemed outlandish but the only minister ready to challenge the CAG’s calculations was the newly appointed telecom minister Kapil Sibal. ‘There can be nothing like “presumptive” loss. There is no loss at all, it is zero loss,’ said Sibal in his interviews.

Sibal’s charge was based on a complex legal–technical argument, claiming that the CAG’s calculations had to be discounted because of various factors, including the maximizing of public welfare as a result of cheap mobile telephony. It may have been a persuasive argument in a courtroom, but Sibal was not a lead counsel appearing before a Supreme Court bench; he was a minister of the government appearing before the court of public opinion. And a disbelieving public found it incredible that a minister was using the word ‘zero loss’ when the CAG had pegged the loss at a whopping Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

‘You people in the media were very unfair to us, very unfair,’ Sibal would later tell me. ‘I was never defending Raja. I always said that the criminal case will be handled by the CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] without any government interference. I was only explaining why the notion of a presumptive loss was flawed.’

Flawed it may have been, but Sibal should have known that by then the public had made up its mind. He was fighting a losing battle. More so, because none of his ministerial colleagues, including the prime minister, were willing to speak up. In the age of a hyperactive media, the UPA’s silence was interpreted as an admission of guilt.

The target of Sibal’s ire was not just the media. It was also the CAG. If T.N. Seshan gave an identity to the office of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Vinod Rai altered the profile of his post from dreary accountant to a robust auditor of policy. Rai,
a Kerala cadre IAS officer, had gained a reputation for financial management before he was chosen by the UPA government for the CAG post. ‘We scored a self-goal,’ one UPA minister said later. ‘We never thought someone like him would turn against us in such a public manner.’

Like Anna Hazare, Rai found himself becoming a popular symbol of the war against corruption. After he retired as CAG, I met the silver-haired Rai once on a flight and asked him about his newfound image as an anti-corruption crusader. ‘I was only doing my job. I did not seek any media attention,’ was his short reply.

Ironically, Rai, like the prime minister, was perceived to be an honest, industrious bureaucrat. Even more ironically, he had been Manmohan Singh’s student at the Delhi School of Economics. It had taken one of his own to push Dr Singh’s government to the brink. A hostile media, an unyielding judiciary, an empowered CAG—the prime minister was looking like an old man at sea besieged by rapidly rising waves. As the prime minister struggled to rescue his reputation, the one person who could have saved him with a supporting raft was also becoming less visible.