For India, economy takes the top priority

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By Swaran Singh (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-03 07:47

A Bollywood blockbuster last year, Singh is King, showed a small-town do-gooder taking over and transforming the empire of an Indian gangster in Australia. Part of that fiction can be seen as reality in Indian politics, which has come to be known as the last resort of scoundrels.

Manmohan Singh, an Oxford University educated economist and former finance minister who began India's reforms in early 1990s, is in his second term as prime minister. Known for his honesty and integrity as a politician and efficacy as a technocrat, Singh can be seen as playing the do-gooder in Indian politics. And as a start, the new council of ministers carries his stamp.

The global economic crisis has made Singh "doubly indispensable" for India. Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her son and budding party leader Rahul Gandhi have reinforced that belief by making it clear that he is the undisputed leader of the Indian government.

Singh, Sonia Gandhi and her son apparently spent the last couple of weeks trying to create a clear division of labor in the Congress. While Sonia Gandhi is in charge of dealing with UPA coalition partners, Singh is in charge of "governance", though his writ is limited to 60 Congress ministers, nineteen other ministers come from UPA coalition parties.

Singh has rewarded his team members who performed well in the last term, and inducted many young leaders into his government.

Since the Congress did surprisingly well in the general election, many leaders had been clamoring for Rahul Gandhi to join the government, with some even saying he should replace Singh as the prime minister. But Rahul Gandhi stood his ground that he would rather focus on rebuilding the Congress by attracting more youths and democratizing the party.

The more than 120-year old party has come to be known for dynastic rule and sycophancy toward the Nehru-Gandhi family, which has ruled for 36 of the 50 years that the Congress has been in power since India's independence in 1947. Rahul Gandhi is more like his mother in this context, and has chosen to stay out of the government, which has earned him more respect and trust

It is widely believed that given India's (especially Congress') politics of sycophancy, his entry into the council of ministers could have overshadowed the importance of the prime minister. Instead, the 38-year-old is now being compared with his father - who became the prime minister at 40 - but displays a much better grip on India's politics.

Rahul Gandhi did commit a few faux pas in his initial years in politics, but his piecemeal approach, mild-manner and dynamic and substantive leadership, and media management during the election clearly put most other Congress leaders in shade. Hence, few today grudge his projection as India's future prime minister.

Apart from staying away from the government and government-formation, Rahul Gandhi also continues to steer clear from dealing with UPA coalition partners. Instead, he is focusing on rebuilding the Congress into a force that wouldn't require the help of allies to form a government, and seems to be aware of factional politics in the Congress.

But he has facilitated the entry of several of his close friends into the council of ministers in charge of social sectors and minority affairs. This indirect approach has helped him offload several senior Congress leaders known to have indulged in factional politics.

Thanks to Singh, this was the first general election in a long time when the incumbent Congress government sought people's mandate without being embroiled in a corruption scandal.

And even this time, he has made his priorities clear to his ministerial colleagues: transparency, good governance and performance. And advisers to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi both understand the strengths of Singh.

But government formation is a difficult task, especially blending "political considerations" with "stress on talent" and mixing the young with the old - or what Singh calls blending energy with experience. A gap of 50 years separates the oldest from the youngest ministers: S.M. Krishna, minister of external affairs, is 77 years old, and Agatha Sangma, deputy minister of rural development, is 28.

Six more ministers are under 40. The Congress, for a change, has attracted many young leaders.

Singh's immediate focus, however, will be economic growth, commerce, foreign investments, negotiations on the environment and home affairs, and he has put his best ministers on those jobs. He has put ambitious targets for the ministers in the first 100 days, reinforced by the "perform or perish" message from Sonia Gandhi.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has promised to present the country's 2009-10 budget by first week of July, and said the government would do everything to return to an annual growth rate of 9 per cent. The industry and financial market welcomed the announcement as the stock market recording an unprecedented rise.

The author is a professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

(China Daily 06/03/2009 page9)