Missed opportunity

All leaders must be good men but all good men need not be good leaders, as Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh once again demonstrated at his meeting with the electronic media. He had a wonderful opportunity to neutralise some of the bad press he and his Government have been getting over the procession of scams. But the lack of ready wit and the knack for a well-timed but cutting repartee converted the occasion into a tedious re-statement by him of a variety of platitudes, known positions and obfuscations. He seemed to be going through the motions — as he indeed seems to have been doing for the last year or so where the media is concerned — and amazingly, even the journalists looked bored and unenthusiastic. There were some half-hearted attempts to get some further elucidation on why the Government had allowed all the scams to happen in the first place even though it had been adequately warned. Dr Singh's response was quite incredible. He said he didn't think they were scams at the time or that he didn't know they would be turned into scams by members of his Cabinet and that coalition dharma, too, was responsible in some measure for his lack of prophylactic action. Thus, the Prime Minister suggested, it was better to turn a blind eye to some of the mischief — boys will be boys, you know — than to have an election every six months. As admissions of helplessness go, it would be hard to find a parallel. This made his less-than-strenuous denial that UPA-II was a lame duck government sound quite hollow.

On the very unusual Devas-Antrix deal, which this newspaper was the first to expose last May, no one asked him how it had been allowed to go through in the first place. So he was content to narrate the sequence of events after July 2010. On the 2G scam he said Mr Raja told him all was OK and he took that at face value. On the delay in concluding the enquiry into the CWG shenanigans of the Organising Committee, he said India observed the rule of law and that these things could take time. On the issue of revenues foregone he came up with an absolute gem: are subsidies to the poor revenue foregone, he asked. Had it been someone else, he would have been accused of being too clever by half. But Dr Singh seemed to ask the question in all sincerity. Asked how he felt about being surrounded by men and women of doubtful principles, he said compromises were necessary in life. Queried if he would like to quit, he said — as once before — that he had a job to do.

That may well be true, but the pity is that he is not doing the job he was elected to do, namely, to provide a clean, if not good government. The meeting with the electronic media was a chance to show that he was trying hard. But, as the Americans so rudely put it, he blew it.

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