Singh - Underachiever or just plain old Hamlet?

A lot of people are unhappy that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been described as an `Under-achiever’ by the Time magazine. Well, I think that is an understatement.

The only problem is that Time describes the hapless Prime Minister as an under-achiever because he has not done what the magazine and its backers would like him to do, such as clear  Wal-Mart’s proposal to tap into the $ 600 billion Indian retail market, give American and European banks the rights to buy up Indian banks.   

I believe the poor man is an under-achiever because he can’t make up his mind on most issues.

As long as Pranab Mukherjee was in his cabinet, he would outsource all the fire-fighting such as handling the Telengana mess* or wrestling with a global meltdown, to the older man, once his boss. While Singh took on larger, yet safer roles – talk peace with Pakistan, talk about global geo-strategy with Barack Obama.

Even there he would often backtrack after his ministers told him they could not go along with him. For instance, on Siachen*, Singh wanted a demilitarised peace park. That park went up in smoke, when his ministers and Generals warned him that Siachen was not just an Indo-Pak affair but had a China looking on. One wrong move, they warned, could see the People’s Liberation Army marching in, as the Indian Army pulled out of the strategic icy Himalayan wasteland, in his `misplaced’ enthusiasm to bring peace to the sub-continent.   

When Mukherjee, a man groomed by the Socialist era Premier Indira Gandhi moved on to try his luck as President of India, many expected Singh would come into his own. His aides suggested as much, talking about broad sweeping reforms he might bring.

Well, the problem with that has been that Singh hasn’t yet shown much stomach for hard nosed decision making.

One problem has been that “the Prime Minister and the government as a whole faces the dilemma of Caesar’s wife – everybody knows she is honest but she has to be seen as honest – that means no one wants to take tough decisions such as telecom pricing,” say top officials.

This, saw the government first appointing Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar as head of the Empowered Group of Ministers on telecom to fix the reserve price for an auction of 2G spectrum. However, the worthy recused himself post haste from the job. Though he claimed that he was excusing himself as allegations had surfaced of his links with telecom firms and he did not wish to give detractors an opportunity to drag him into another controversy, sources said that the Maratha strongman did not fancy being a “fall guy” in the spectrum pricing controversy.

Last week, the home minister has been given the job but asked not to take a final call on spectrum pricing, which will be decided by the full cabinet !

The issue here is that a decision in favour of high reserve prices, set in competition with each other by the department of telecom and Telecom regulator, could kill the `Golden Goose’ and scare off potential foreign investors in the telecom sector, leaving the business in the hands of existing players. While a decision to lower prices is sure to arouse cries of foul from Government auditors and opposition MPs.

The other problem is that the Government wants to address too many constituencies. Just like the man in Aesop's fables, who could not make up his mind whether to let the ass carry his load and be seen as insensitive or to be sensitive and carry the load himself.

 On the Vodafone tax case, the prime minister’s office seems to be signaling that  it is against retrospective taxation. Which should please corporates who are dead against this.

(The Union Budget’s finance bill this year, had a retrospective amendment which clarifies that the Income Tax laws of 1962 meant to tax any deal where the asset underlying the sale or purchase is in India, even if the deal is struck elsewhere.

This was done after Supreme Court had ruled this January, that the Government of India had no jurisdiction to tax the share sale done by a Hong Kong registered shell firm owned by Hutchison to Vodafone conducted in the tax haven of Cayman islands. The government was asked to return  Rs 11,000 crore in presumptive taxes with 4 per cent annual interest.)

However, no formal communication has been sent to North Block to withdraw the legislation or to not serve tax notices based on it, leaving many lawmakers and taxmen, who feel they have a legitimate case in seeking taxes which they feel have been deliberately not paid by using a veil of corporate shells, confused.

The advantage of course goes to the opposition in such a situation. BJP leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha took the opportunity to attack the Prime Minister directly, stating Singh was an overrated economist and underrated politician.

 "Manmohan Singh has always acted as a consultant to the government, being a Prime Minister for eight years and a Finance Minister for some years. Who brought this situation? It's absolutely wrong to say it is a global mess, it's a domestic mess created by the government," Sinha said.

Luckily for the ruling Congress Party, the opposition can’t really push home its advantage. Its shop is in such a desperate mess, with bitter in-fighting and trading of charges of corruption, that even Singh playing the role of Hamlet does not kindle much favour for them among Indian voters.

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*Telangana mess - Section of people living in the backward Telegana region of the state of Andhra Pradesh have demanded a separate state carved out of Andhra, within the Union of India. A number of flip-flops on the issue of a separate state,by the ruling Congress Party , have alterternatively raised or dampened hopes for setting up of the state.

*Siachen - A glacier in Northern Kashmir, fortified by the Indian Army since the 1980s after Pakistan gave permission to several expeditions by British, Japanese and other mountaineers to  traverse the glacier in an apparent move to lay claim on the strategic Glacier. Siachen is surrounded on two sides by Pakistan-held Kashmir, Chinese-held Kashmir and on two more by India's Leh district of Jammu & Kashmir. Since 1984, when Pakistan launched its first attack on Indian posts in that icy glacier, dubbed the highest battleground in the world, the two neighbours have been at odds over the glacier and the Saltoro range of mountains, immediately to the west of the glaciers.