Singh turns 81 but there's no cake

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 82nd birthday did not start well. He was awoken, in the wee hours of the morning, to be told of the attack on Samba in Jammu and Kashmir. The tragedy couldn't have come at a worse time; the previous day, Singh had finally announced that he would meet Pakistan's new Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The day after the Sharif-Singh meeting grabbed the headlines, it would be replaced by news of another attack sponsored by elements within Pakistan.

From his suite in a Frankfurt hotel, Singh's team swiftly produced a harsh condemnation of the attack. For a prime minister who has taken weeks to respond to an issue - and then often with a statement that could be used as an illustration for the definition of the word "anodyne" - this was a marked departure. Likely Singh wanted to get ahead of the news cycle for once. They also wanted to pre-empt any grumblings about the Sharif meeting from the Congress. The Congress was forced into backing its prime minister, even as various of its leaders desperately leaked their "unhappiness" with the situation to friendly journalists. The Congress loves to be all things to all people, and thus winds up being nothing to everybody.

On board Air India One, the various preparations for Singh's birthday were thus damped down. The cake-cutting was cancelled, for fear of TV anchors proclaiming the PM ate cake while jawans died. The eventual fate of the cake is as of the time of this writing unknown, in spite of considerable investigation by this correspondent.

Singh thus spent most of his artificially lengthened birthday in his suite aboard Air India One, as it flew from Frankfurt's bustling airport, where dozens of stern-looking Germans in black Mercedes cars surrounded the plane on the tarmac, to Washington DC's high-security Andrews Air Force Base.

If he looked out of his window on his way, he would have seen constant reminders of the shortfalls of his government. The landscape of Germany is dotted with huge roofs, of the kind not seen when flying even over the more developed parts of India; they're the roofs of the endless factories that have made the country a manufacturing powerhouse, while under the nine years of Singh's government manufacturing has stalled. The rivers of northern Europe are crowded with the worm-like outlines of barges ferrying goods, a reminder that inland waterways have been similarly neglected. The shallow waters of the North Sea sprout the stalks and elegant petals of wind farms, while Singh's government chases traditional sources of energy at the expense of renewables.

If he had turned away from the windows, depressed, there would have been no solace in the newspapers Air India One took on at Frankfurt, either. They are covered with news of the recent German election, and the likelihood that the two major parties will enter into an alliance. In India, as in Germany, more unites the two national parties than divide them; but, even as Singh's government struggles for numbers in Parliament, it has generally failed to even bring the BJP on board with the issues that party originally supported.

All in all, this is unlikely to have been a birthday Singh will want to remember. Still, he can at least take solace in one thing. The ghastliness of the attack on Samba means that having the resolve to go through with the Sharif meeting would in itself be considered an achievement.