PM blames the media for all his troubles!
Will history judge him kindly or harshly?
Ask some historians!
Yes, PM Dr.Singh in his third and last press conference has announced that he won’t seek a third term. Was this news? Nor no news? It was almost, if we can say, non-news!
Why? His last present conference and that too at the far end of his term of 10 long years and such an announcement must have evoked great deal of attention. It is a great pity. The press conference itself arranged by the information minister didn’t go well with the invitees.
The pressmen were not allowed entry or to ask questions on some of the most contentious issues like Telengana, Maharashtra and Gujarat and what else the media is expected to ask the Prime Minister. First, this is not a genuine press meet. It was for quite some time orchestrated by the information minister who also doubles up as the party spokesman.
Many other things are also normal with the PM’s less than forthcoming mindset or his strategy. At the end of some 7 minutes, it was all very uninspiring, to say the least and the PM seemed to be also less than fully a person in his own right, he seemed to have been labouring under so much of a constraint from some other external forces.
On some of his more controversial roles, the number of corruption scams and scandals that grip the minds of the pubic the PM was downright dishonest, to say the least. How can he treat such huge number of huge corruptions, 2-g, coal scam and the Neera Radia tapes he can say that people didn’t take them seriously, they happened under UPA-1 and yet people voted the government to power! So, this is his logic or moral justification.
Corruption is corruption and he should come out as a serious, learned and very highly sensitive leader of some stature, right?
Unfortunately, the image of the PM as a learned and as a scholarly person gets dented very seriously. And on many other issues like even the next Prime Minister he rushes to praise Rahul Gandhi where some dignified, studied silence would have enhanced his image. How can e say at this stage that Rahul is an “outstanding leader”? Why he chose to downgrade his own sense of propriety?
Now, after having his revenge at Narendra Modi calling his PM ambition would be disasterous, he goes on to say this and that that didn’t stick in the public mind.
Finally, he claimed that history might me kinder to him and not the current Indian media!
Why? Why he makes claims on history?
It is rather very chilling to put the burden on history. History if often very ruthless and very critical on those who leave a legacy of disappointment and a series of unprecedented corruption scandals that had never before happened in independent India.
What else will be his legacy?
Opening up of the economy? Even here there would be critical questions. Why leave out Narasimha Rao. He said once that it was he the Prime Minister and Dr.Singh was his finance minister. What is the meaning and the message?
In India of course, it is a tradition since the days of the British rule that officials often took credit for what the real master favoured. Be it railways or other such momentous development decisions. What was the PM’s original decisions? The opening up of the economy is no seen not such an exclusive claim. That won’t win favour. May be he is a good monetary expert.
He was never a growth economist. Never a distributive justice economist either. And let us not forget that in India the professional economists are too many and they are made much of. Indian economy is growing on its own, on the basis of external as well as the internal dynamism. Let us give credit to the people, to the entrepreneurs and professionals. See how the IT industry came about? It is a big topic that needs separate discussion.
He was an honest and truthful man, of course. His personal integrity is undisputed.
Yes, he might lay claim to the Indo-US nuclear deal. But then it came at the cost of national honour, not on our terms. He had said to George Bush, the much-reviled person now, as Indians love you very much”. Such statements never become historic statements.
Not one line or one word you can attribute to our Prime Minister. All his years he travelled regularly to all capitals of the world and seemed to have cultivated and enhanced the image of India. But alas! See at last, at the end of his term, his much claimed friendship and personal equations with Barack Obama didn’t help him when the Indian consul Ms.Khobragade issue shot up.
What a degrading fall for the Indian self-respect? How this came about?
If only our Prime Minister had lifted his phone and made a call to the US President? Just a call? Not even bothering to wait for his response the Indian Prime Minister would have gone down in history as a proud Indian.
Alas! It never came to him naturally. Dr.Manmohan Singh was never a natural leader.
This is all what matters.This is all what would matter when future historians come to write the history.
India’s standing in the world would be judged not by us, but by our neighbours and friends, in all parts of the world. Even other nations when their national self-respect, honour came to matter, as in Brazil or Germany or even in other countries, over the surveillance and spying and tapping the phones, here we had a prime Minister who chose to keep silence.
The Americans went all over like spoilt children. And they ended up hurting their own credibility, be it spying or treating the Indian diplomat with some protocol or be their own dignity as diplomats in India.
At the end, it looks our PM might go out without anybody singing his phrase.
Unfortunately, we seem to have cultivated a culture of politics that is ruthless, a culture that is practised by persons who are equally unpatriotic and as a pore-grab as the present crop of opportunists and power-brokers and crony capitalists who asted as financiers of this type of power for power sake culture.
In this “no-principles come what may “politics of money, power and materialist instinct there is no place for truth. With truth buried so ruthlessly, how do you expect history to be kinder to you?
This question is seriously addressed both to serious historians as well as to the current practioners of power grab!