When Sir Humphrey Appleby Became Prime Minister

In his book titled “The Age of Uncertainty”, celebrated American economist John Kenneth Galbraith succinctly articulated what political leadership is all about.

He said, “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

Now pause for a moment and think of your favourite political leader -across the ages, across countries - and check whether he satisfies Galbraith’s test.

My guess is you are nodding in approval as you think. Political Leadership is about understanding what your people feel and responding to it.

It is a good time to ponder over this quote if you are an Indian because more than anything else, the country seems to be reeling under a leadership deficit.

Exactly a year ago, Forbes India wrote how a weak Prime Minister, who was increasingly unable to respond to the criticism against his cabinet colleagues, might actually make things worse.

A year later, things have actually got worse.

In my view, the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to scrap 2G telecom licences isn’t just the result of flawed telecom policy or a wayward cabinet minister. The SC verdict brings back in sharp focus the kind of leadership deficit that now epitomizes UPA-2 and Manmohan Singh’s leadership style.

Over the past one year, I have tried to understand the basis of Singh’s leadership style; his leadership mantra, so to say, and why he falls short of expectations.

Partly, it is a personality issue. ``He is no Bill Clinton. He has a weakness when it comes to communicating to the media or the general public,'' a person who knows Singh well said to me. But in a greater measure, it seems that his idea of the prime minister's role is based on an incomplete understanding of the parliamentary form of government.

Policies such as distributing scarce airwaves were eventually cabinet decisions taken after lengthy deliberations. For the Prime Minister to either keep quiet or pass the blame to his former cabinet colleague violates the basic tenet of “collective responsibility”. Yet Singh believes a PM should not “micro-manage” any ministry. In his view, once a ministry is assigned to a cabinet minister then it is the responsibility of minister in-charge.

At one level, this is a good working principle that some authoritarian prime ministers of India in the past were accused of having forgotten. Mrs Indira Gandhi was often accused of being overly autocratic.

However, there is a flip side to this daily working principle too: ultimately, the buck stops with the PM. And in cases of high-profile mismanagement, it is the PM who must necessarily intervene and sort out the issue.

It doesn't appear that Manmohan Singh appreciates that even after designating all ministries with individual cabinet ministers, the Prime Minister’s responsibility, as the captain of the team, is not reduced even one bit. Ultimately, as far as policy making is concerned, it is the Prime Minister who is responsible not only for his personal conduct but also that of each member of his team. And when time demands he would have to guide and even rectify their behaviour.

But Singh does not look at himself as the final repository of the Indian electorate’s trust. Perhaps because he has never won that trust, not at least by means of winning a popular election. He does not see himself as the leader of the Indian masses. Instead, he sees himself as a professional who puts in an honest day’s work each day. That’s it.

His understanding of the top job lacks the appreciation of the political aspect, which incidentally is the most important element. That is why we find him always trailing behind the public mood whether it is on the Lokpal bill or the right to food. As finance minister in 1991, Singh was able to push through unpopular reforms because the then PM PV Narasimha Rao lent him the shielding cover of his political acumen. Now being PM, Singh does not have such a cover within the government and that has severely handicapped policymaking. The presence of the Left parties in UPA-1 helped him leave the blame for indecision at AKG Bhavan's doorstep. Now even that is not available.

Even today, if you were to ask whether Manmohan Singh would change the way he leads his country and more specifically, his cabinet, if the results of the crucial state elections were to go against the ruling party, the answer is a simple, and rather unbelievable, “no.” That’s because there is hardly anything political about Singh's style of leading the world’s largest democracy.

The PM, for his part, feels aggrieved by the constant outpouring against him but he puts it down to the general public’s faulty understanding of the governance structure in the country.

According to him, since this is not a Presidential form of government, the PM is not supposed to crack a whip and set things right. In his view, the parliamentary form of government essentially implies that decisions are likely to take longer as they would require wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders, expert panels and committees to look into all round feasibility, so on and so forth.

So while he accepts that lack of reforms in the land acquisition policy is not only holding up development but also creating increasing number of victims, he does not see any new way to solve the problem.

Manmohan Singh’s approach to leadership is more akin to that of an honest, hardworking and well-meaning bureaucrat who has no political stakes .

With just two years left for his tenure to end, Singh is surely on his last lap. And if things continue the way they do, when the dust settles down, I suspect, political commentators  would do Singh a favour by remembering him more as India’s finance minister during the 1990s than India’s longest serving Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.