PM loses ground

Colleagues may be trying to pull him down a peg.

L’affaire Sharm el-Sheikh may have done Manmohan Singh more damage than is obvious; it may have diminished him after the stature that he had gained following the UPA’s electoral victory and subsequent return to power for a second five-year term. As a consequence, it may have made him more vulnerable to party and other political pressures. Consider the evidence: no one from the Congress party has come forward to defend the government on the joint statement with Pakistan (even if, admittedly, there are parts of the joint statement that are hard to defend); Mamata Banerjee is able to hold up two crucial Bills relating to land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation, with support from some other ministers in the Cabinet; and finally, AK Antony and others manage successfully to raise a flag of revolt when it comes to the terms of the proposed free trade agreement with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (or Asean). In the latter two cases, the Prime Minister tried to reason with his Cabinet colleagues, apparently to no effect.

What these episodes have done is to expose the weakness in the Prime Minister’s position. Most people had assumed after the election results were in, that the decimation of the Left and the fact that no one coalition partner could pull down the UPA government would have given Dr Singh a stronger hand to play. Indeed, the prolonged Cabinet formation process had shown that the Congress leadership was keen to rein in recalcitrant alliance partners, most importantly the ministers belonging to the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK); certainly, Mr Raja is no longer able to make unilateral announcements on telecom policy and spectrum pricing, as he had done in the last government. But the Prime Minister has no recourse when his own ministers do not accept his views in Cabinet meetings, as last week’s somewhat surprising events made clear. It might be argued that this is the stuff of genuine debate, and that the Prime Minister’s view need not prevail always. While that may be true in theory, in the world of realpolitik the messages being communicated through such episodes are quite different.