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NAME:
MANMOHAN SINGH
AGE: 73
DESIGNATION: Prime Minister |
Has Manmohan Singh, the
architect of India's economic reforms, finally made a full transition
to Manmohan Singh, the populist politician? Several clauses in
the "10-point social charter" he outlined at CII's AGM
on May 24 seem to point to that. In particular, his exhortation
to industry to temper its profit motive seems a straight lift
from the ideologies of the 1950s and 1960s that made India the
"sick man of Asia". Then, his advice to industry to
cap the pay of senior executives can only be termed ill-conceived
at a time when Indian business is grappling with a massive talent
shortage. These remarks, expectedly, have set the cat among the
pigeons.
It is universally accepted that the Prime Minister is a decent
and honourable man; his erudition and intelligence, too, have
been on public display through his decades-long involvement in
public affairs, first as a technocrat-administrator of parts of
India's financial system, then as the helmsman of India's financial
future and, finally, as Prime Minister.
But it is also becoming evident that he's a weak Prime Minister
who still remains in the political shadow of Congress President
and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi; and therein lies the problem.
He lacks the political authority to take the bull by the horn
and implement the tough measures needed to make his wish of "inclusive
growth" a reality. It's a slogan no one can argue with. On
the ground, this means delivering the benefits of India's steroid-charged
growth to the hundreds of millions of people who remain outside
its ambit. The Prime Minister himself has gone on record saying
that this can only be achieved when India's farmers get remunerative
prices for their crops; when the millions of youth who enter the
workforce every year have ready jobs waiting for them; and when
the hundreds of thousands of crores that Indians save every year
is efficiently channelled, through an efficient financial services
sector, to productive sectors of the economy that needs this money.
But all this will require larger doses of reforms-that need political
will to implement.
Singh today stands at the crossroads. What he does over the
next few months will determine the nature of his political legacy.
-Kapil Bajaj
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