The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (10 page)

But when I went back to him with her acceptance, the PM looked sheepish and informed me that he had already agreed to appoint Syeda Hameed, a Muslim writer and social activist, and so, I was told, there was no place left for Anu. Clearly, the ‘gender’ and ‘minority’ boxes had been filled up with Syeda’s appointment. I was left with the embarrassing task of explaining away the confusion to Anu. What I obviously could not say to her was that the political benefits of rewarding a Muslim may well have trumped those of appointing a Parsi! To my dismay, even Dr Singh seemed to take this embarrassment lightly. For those who had served a lifetime in government, such slips seemed to be par for the course. Ironically, while it was Manmohan Singh who had been initially keen to find a niche for Anu, it was Sonia who finally provided one, by inducting her into her NAC in UPA-2.

Even as the process of making these appointments was going on, I was summoned by the PM one afternoon and asked if I had any suggestions for who should be named deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. I suggested Montek, who was still with the IMF in Washington DC but was willing to return if asked to do so.

‘The party has some politicians in mind,’ he said. He then mentioned the names that had been suggested to him—Digvijaya Singh, S.M. Krishna and Veerappa Moily. All former chief ministers, I thought to myself, and all without a seat in Parliament. So, naturally, the three would covet a job like this one with all the perks of a Cabinet rank and without the necessity of being a member of Parliament. These were good names, I said to him diplomatically, but repeated that if he was thinking of a job for Montek, this would be a good one. As deputy chairman Montek would be able to act as a bridge between the PM and other ministers as well as chief ministers, with whom Dr Singh needed a trustworthy link. Vajpayee had excellent relations with chief ministers across the country whereas Dr Singh knew very few on a personal level. A deputy chairman who was a politician, I reasoned, like the three suggested to him, might have good relations with chief ministers, but might not be a reliable bridge with them.

The days when the Planning Commission was composed entirely of subject experts were long gone. Various political and social quotas had now to be filled. North, south, scheduled caste, woman, minority. In the era of coalitions, every constituent political party wanted to name a member. For the PM, himself a former deputy chairman, the Planning Commission had become the place where he could park a trusted aide.

Now that he knew exactly where I stood on the deputy chairmanship of the Planning Commission, Dr Singh summoned Nair and Pulok. When the two arrived, he first asked them for their advice. Nair kept quiet. Pulok said, ‘The party has suggested Mr Moily.’ I assumed ‘the party’ in this case meant Sonia. Dr Singh then turned to me. On cue, I offered my rationale for suggesting Montek’s name. At this point, Nair piped up to say the Left Front might object.

I knew I was meant to make a good case for Montek’s induction, and so I did. The Planning Commission, I pointed out, was a prime ministerial creation. Nehru had formed the institution through an administrative order to be able to guide long-term economic policy, partly because he had lost control of the ministry of finance to his critics. How could anyone object to the PM naming a person of his choice? If the PM could not name his own deputy chairman, what authority would he have while naming heads of other institutions? The ‘party’ might have good political reasons for seeking one person or another to be appointed, but the PM should name whomever he wanted to. The Planning Commission, after all, was the only institution directly under his charge, apart from the PMO.

The PM remained silent and there was no further discussion. That afternoon, Montek was in South Block. He had stopped off in Delhi for a few days en route to Beijing. I later learnt that he had a meeting that morning with Finance Minister P. Chidambaram who had invited him to return to his old job as finance secretary. Clearly, Chidambaram did not know that the PM was mulling other plans for Montek. I briefed Montek about the discussions in the PMO. ‘Barkis is willin’,’ he quipped, quoting the famous line from
David
Copperfield
to confirm his interest in the job. When I told him that the Left seemed to be blocking his entry, he replied that he would speak to Prabhat Patnaik, his contemporary from college and now a leading Left intellectual.

Late that evening, I found the PM still in South Block. In the few days I had been there, I would usually see him leave around 7 p.m. for RCR. Intrigued by the fact that he was in his office well beyond that hour, I came out of my room to see what was happening, found the door of the visitors’ room open and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury waiting there. He had escorted his party boss Harkishan Singh Suqeet, the general secretary of the CPI(M), to South Block. The PM and Surjeet were closeted inside Dr Singh’s room. I chatted for a while with Yechury, whom I knew as Sita from our schooldays in Hyderabad and learnt from him that the opposition to Montek’s name was not the handiwork of the Left but of economist Arjun Sengupta. Arjun (now deceased) had been a member of the Planning Commission during Narasimha Rao’s time and had been an economic adviser in the Indira Gandhi PMO in the early 1980s. Then close to Pranab Mukherjee, he had been leveraging his connections with the Left to become deputy chairman. When Surjeet and Sita left, I went to see the PM to find out what had transpired, but by then he was already on his way out.

The first thing I did the next morning was to go across to RCR and ask him why Surjeet had come to call on him. He merely said, ‘Montek will be deputy chairman.’ But his smile, exuding both mischief and triumph, gave the game away. One wily Sardar had secured the support of another wily Sardar to get a third one on board.

The episode gave me some interesting insights into Dr Singh’s ways. Clearly, he had made up his mind to give Montek the job well before he staged that internal debate within the PMO. Before he could get Surjeet to support his plan, he needed arguments to be made to fob off the party hopefuls and the likes of Arjun Sengupta. I had been drafted to make them. It was a role I would be called upon to play on many occasions.

On 16 June, Montek’s appointment was announced. On the 18th
The
Hindu
quoted anonymous ‘Left leaders’ expressing their disapproval of his appointment. I heard subsequently that the CPI(M)’s Prakash Karat was furious with Surjeet for giving Dr Singh the go-ahead. This was an early pointer to the differences between Surjeet and Karat. To ease the situation, the Left was then approached for a name to be included in the Commission and they suggested Abhijit Sen, a professor at JNU.

 

 

About six months into UPA-1, early on the morning of 3 January 2005, Mani Dixit died of a massive heart attack. His sudden death shocked and saddened Dr Singh. It also put at risk the foreign policy agenda. Dr Singh knew that Mani was capable of taking on the more conservative elements in the Indian foreign policy establishment. With him gone, the danger of Dr Singh’s foreign policy falling prey to Congress party and South Block conservatives was real. Dr Singh realized that he would now have to personally handle things that he could have trusted Mani with.

On the morning of Mani’s death, the PM was to go to Ahmedabad to address the Indian Science Congress. He first went to Mani’s house, met his wife, Anu, and their family, and drove straight to the airport. He sat shell-shocked, all alone, in his cabin and looked drawn and tired through the day. He issued instructions that Mani should be given a ceremonial funeral at the Delhi cantonment. As the NSA he was, after all, technically the head of the newly emerging nuclear command and the service chiefs reported to him. As soon as he returned to Delhi that evening, the PM issued orders naming the deputy NSA, Satish Chandra, a career diplomat, as acting NSA.

Soon after, the succession struggle began. The foreign service officers in the PMO, Vikram Doraiswamy and Sujata Mehta, seemed keen on regularizing Chandra’s appointment as NSA. I viewed this as motivated by foreign service loyalty. Dr Singh was clearly not keen on this option but he did not name anyone else either for a full three weeks.
Hindustan
Times
reported that three names were being considered for the job, including India’s former high commissioner to Pakistan, Satinder Lambah, the Indian ambassador in Washington DC, Ronen Sen, and of course, the PMO’s very own M.K. Narayanan.

The Indian Foreign Service had clearly come to view the NSA’s job as its turf. Both Brajesh and Mani belonged to this service. Thus, the media was effectively deployed by this lobby to debunk MK’s claim. Vir Sanghvi wrote a column in
HT
dubbing Narayanan a ‘flat-footed policeman’ and pushing the idea that the NSA ought to be from the foreign service. As the days went by, the media became curious about what was going on in decision-making circles and began floating various names.

One day, I asked Dr Singh if he had made up his mind about what to do. He told me he hadn’t, and added, ‘Will you please ask Subrahmanyam what he thinks I should do?’

That evening I drove to Subrahmanyam’s DDA flat in Vasant Kunj. We went over the pros and cons of various names being mentioned in the media. He was not sure if Satish Chandra would be the right man for the job but had high regard for both Satinder Lambah and Ronen Sen. ‘In any case,’ he said to me, ‘the NSA should be someone that the PM implicitly trusts.’ At the end of a long evening, with Mrs Subrahmanyam plying us with tea, he suggested three options.

Option One: Use this opportunity to implement the original idea of moving the NSA out of the PMO. In this case, the NSA’s role would have to be redefined more in line with the role played by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. This would mean the NSA need not be an IAS or IFS or even IPS officer. He could be from the services, or from a scientific organization or even from a think tank.

‘If Sukhamoy [the economist] could be deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, why cannot someone like Roddam Narasimha [the scientist] or Raja Mohan [the international relations expert] be the NSA?’

This was truly an out-of-the-box solution. The problem, I told him, was that this would not fly with Dr Singh, who would regard it as too radical an option.

Option Two would be to simply appoint Narayanan as the NSA and retain Satish Chandra as deputy NSA, placing him in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the NSC. Option Three was to stay with the status quo, retaining Narayanan as adviser for internal security and appointing another NSA. For Option Three he had two names for NSA—Ronen Sen and S.K. Lambah.

As I was leaving his flat, Subrahmanyam called me back and said, ‘I suggest you tell MK [referring to Narayanan] that this is what I am suggesting to PM. Tell PM that he should take MK into confidence on whatever he plans to do. After all, if PM opts for the first or third option, the new NSA will have to work as part of a team that will include MK.’

The next morning I met the PM and briefed him. He agreed that Narayanan should be spoken to, and said, ‘You tell him. See what he says.’

I walked down the corridor to Narayanan’s room and reported to him what had happened, that the PM had sought Subrahmanyam’s advice through me and that Subrahmanyam had suggested three options, and so on.

Narayanan heard me out patiently and with no expression on his face. At the end he asked, ‘So what has PM decided?’

I told him the PM had not decided anything. He just mumbled ‘Okay’ and I went back to my room.

For several days thereafter there was no further news. The occasional journalist would call me to find out if there was any update on naming a full-time NSA, in place of Satish Chandra’s part-time role, and I would have nothing to offer. One day, Narayanan called me and asked if I knew what was happening. I mentioned to him that there was a news report that Ronen might be coming to Delhi on a visit. Narayanan burst out.

‘I say! The PM should be made aware that if I am not appointed, I will quit.’

He then narrated the story of how Sonia Gandhi had first offered the position to him and that it was he who had suggested Mani’s name to the PM because of his personal obligation to be in Chennai with his ailing mother. He said he had found a solution to this problem and he was now ready to move his home to Delhi and so expected to be named NSA.

I delivered this message to the PM. Dr Singh responded instantly, saying, ‘Yes, it will be Narayanan. I have decided.’

I asked him why then he had not yet conveyed this to Narayanan. Why was he holding back? If the decision has been taken, why not inform all concerned and make the announcement?

Dr Singh looked up and asked, ‘What is the hurry?’

I was flummoxed. I had no real answer. But I managed to come up with one.

‘Today is the 25 th, tomorrow is Republic Day. If you appoint him today he can go to the Republic Day parade and to the Rashtrapati Bhavan reception as the new NSA. You will make him happy. Otherwise, at Rashtrapati Bhavan everyone will ask what is happening about the NSA’s appointment and this will irritate him. Why do you want to irritate him? If you have anyway decided to give him the job, do it today.’