Swapan Dasgupta on Manmohans 5 years

Man leaves no footprints

The special circumstances of Manmohan’s rise to the top job should warn against describing his term as the “Singh era”. The PM, as a British magazine observed, was in office but not in power. The levers of power were always held by Sonia Gandhi and individual Cabinet Ministers were given unprecedented autonomy. The all-important PMO was reduced to a cipher, its role limited to periodic expressions of unhappiness. Till the “office of profit” issue forced Sonia to be more careful, even crucial policy making was vested in the National Advisory Council headed by her.Manmohan’s unique contribution lay in transforming the Central Government into a confederal arrangement. Lalu Yadav did his own thing in Rail Bhawan; Praful Patel forged his own policy of favouritism; Anbumani Ramadoss carried out his personal witch-hunt at AIIMS; and crony capitalism became the norm in DMK-run Ministries. Nor were Congress Cabinet Ministers more disciplined. Arjun Singh was on his own pseudo-radical trip; Mani Shankar Aiyar crafted his own foreign policy during his short stint as Petroleum Minister; and P Chidambaram never took kindly to even the gentlest hint of criticism. Meanwhile, political management was left to Ahmed Patel and Pranab Mukherjee.