A PM out of office looks prettier than in it. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has outfoxed all pretenders to his throne, knows this. After all, he is an economist, used to studying data.

Once out of office, every Prime Minister barring three — Jat King Charan Singh (1980), Sleeping Beauty Haradanahalli Deve Gowda and the Government College Lahore-obsessed Inder Gujral – has grown prettier as time has put distance from his or her boo-boos.

Jawaharlal Nehru, despite his several errors of judgement, has gone from jolly chacha to wise nana status.

Lal Bahadur Shastri is remembered fondly as Father of Reforms.

Indira Gandhi has been put on a Ma Durga pedestal. Morarji Desai is held up as an example of no-nonsense leader.

Rajiv Gandhi is, oh, such a nice man, you know, a decent sort, heart was in the right place, never mind about the brain.

Atal Behari Vajpayee is remembered as the fox amongst the foxes and the sage amongst the sages.

This should give heart to Dr Singh. He can goof up as much as he likes — statistically, though, he has not deviated from the trend line of prime ministerial goof-ups – and five years after he demits office his double term in office will be seen as a Golden Age of Something.

The enemy within

When he sits down to examine the data, he will see two other things: almost every Prime Minister is initially challenged from within and every Prime Minister eventually chains the rivals to the gatepost.

In the early days even Nehru was given a run for his money by Purushottam Das Tandon. Indira Gandhi had the Syndicate to contend with and, finally, fed up with the Old Guard, she did what came best to her: she destroyed the Party. Morarji was constantly under attack from Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram, and was eventually overthrown by the Jat set. Rajiv was challenged by V. P. Singh; Narasimha Rao by Arjun Singh; and Vajpayee by L K Advani.

Moral: watch your back because it is not the Opposition a PM has to fear, but his or her party colleagues.

Dr Singh would have seen all this in the data as early as June 2004. So his evasive action has been classic: Sonium sharanam gachchami .

Or, as Kapil Sibal who did some hamming as Caesar in college plays will tell him, he can say to his tormentors, “Avast, begone, you blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.”

Bow-wow!

There is another feature that the data reveal – every Prime Minister has at least one barker. Some have two and the Gandhi family has a posse. Thus, Nehru had T. T. Krishnamachari and Krishna Menon. Indira Gandhi had her whole party barking on her behalf. Rajiv had a mufassil college lecturer called Professor K. K. Tiwari and Dr Singh has been given the use of Digvijay Singh.

If 007 had the licence to kill, these worthies have the licence to traduce. The record will show that they say pretty much what comes into their heads.

The same record also shows that once a PM loses credibility, no amount of defensive action in the form of verbal aggression can put humpty-dumpty back again.

This is what is at the heart of Dr Singh's problem. The Indian people now believe that he has run a useless, third-rate, and utterly corrupt government.

It may not be his fault but no matter how cunningly he outwits his opponents, the opprobrium will attach to him.

But no matter. His image will be restored in about five years.

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