Manmohan Singh has a legacy beyond 1991; nuclear deal with US shows his strategic vision

Manmohan Singh’s success lay in making a decisive and historic shift towards the West. It was also audacious, in my book even more so than the 1991 reform, given how little support it had within Congress and UPA

Shekhar Gupta

Millions of words are being written and spoken about Dr Manmohan Singh in these couple of days, and most of these will be about the reforms he introduced in 1991. We can understand how his life is often seen monochromatically by his admirers including those who don’t vote for the Congress and probably never have. That’s very unkind to him in many ways. One, it limits him and his legacy to something he had done almost a decade and a half before he became the prime minister of India. Second, it gives him sole credit for the reform because it was P.V. Narasimha Rao, then the prime minister, who carried the political risk for what was done in 1991. That reform is therefore as much to Rao’s credit as it is to Singh’s. And third, because it limits his legacy to this jugalbandi and denies him the place he deserves in our history for the other substantive contributions he made as prime minister. These range from strategic and foreign affairs to politics. When Singh became prime minister in the summer of 2004, most of the discussion was about what kind of economic agenda the UPA was going to follow.

Was he going to pick up the thread from where he and Rao had left it in 1996, or would he return to the ideology of his party and its largest parliamentary ally, the Left Front? Even the most astute watchers of North and South Blocks were not prepared for the more substantive and historic changes to come in foreign and strategic policy. This was especially so given the Congress’s chronic suspicion of the US and the West and its persistent nostalgia for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Third-Worldism. If you had told somebody on the morning of 24 July, 1991 that by the afternoon Rao would junk Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution with one industry minister’s speech preceding the Budget (Rao held the industry portfolio), you’d be asked to get your head examined. In the summer of 2004, you’d be even more brainless to imagine that within a couple of years, a Left-of-Centre coalition, surviving at the sufferance of the Left Front with 61 MPs, would be finalising India’s first substantive treaty with the US. A strategic one, as it turned out.

This change was rooted in deep, intellectual thinking, even more than the reform of 1991. Then, at least there was the alibi of a crisis, the demands of the IMF. There was no such compulsion to reposition India strategically. That India had to warm up to the West is an idea that had been brewing since Indira Gandhi’s return in 1980, when she was deeply troubled by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and India’s strategic compulsion to back it at the UN. She did reach out to Ronald Reagan at Cancún in 1981. But the relationship didn’t pick up pace. Rajiv Gandhi and then Rao also made some moves, but these were carefully measured baby steps. Of course, the Soviet Union had disappeared, but suspicion and scepticism of the US were still formidable. Atal Bihari Vajpayee made some significant moves, and was attacked by the Congress for the ‘shift’. Singh’s success lay in making the same shift much more decisively at the head of a Congress government. It was also audacious, in my book even more so than the 1991 reform, given how little support this had within his party and among the UPA partners. The Congress was still filled with Cold Warriors, including some of his senior-most Cabinet colleagues. And 10, Janpath was simply not prepared for it.

Nor did it see the need or compulsion. Forget support, there was deep resistance— even resentment—in the foreign service bureaucracy. Many there were hoping that with Vajpayee’s NDA gone, there would be a return to the Congress normal. Nobody was prepared for the opposite. Sonia Gandhi was sceptical, and also particularly trusting of the Left leaders, who saw it as an outrage and betrayal. This became the only issue over which Singh took on his own party bosses and risked his government. Politically, it was riskier than the 1991 reform.

Rao did not have any party bosses to worry about then, nor did he need the Left.Was it worth the risk? Could the gains from it be compared with the reform of 1991? Economic benefit is not always fungible with votes, especially when it comes to the new middle class. The gain a strategic change brings is even less tangible. It means nothing in an election, unless of course you are able to use this to project the image of a strongman ruler adored in global capitals. Manmohan Singh wasn’t designed for that.

(Source: The Print)