New Delhi,Manmohan Singh, the economist credited with playing a key role in ushering in economic reforms in the 1990s, demits office of Prime Minister after 10 years, leaving a mixed legacy of achievements and failures.
Scams that surfaced during UPA II may have undone the good
work of the 81-year-old leader, who had achieved the distinction of serving two
tenures as Prime Minister, the longest after the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s 17
years in office.After tomorrow’s counting of votes in the Lok Sabha elections
in which the UPA is projected by exit polls to suffer a defeat, Singh will
tender his resignation on Saturday.A celebrated economist, he entered politics
at the height of the 1991 economic crisis when late Prime Minister P V
Narasimha Rao inducted him into the government as Finance Minister.
Together they lifted the economy out of the balance of
payments crisis and then paved the way for the economic reforms on which no
successive government has looked back.A technocrat who had occupied various
positions including as Reserve Bank Governor and Secretary General of the
South-South Commission , he had earned a name for probity and integrity that
made him the automatic choice for Sonia Gandhi when she decided to renounced
the post of Prime Minister.Taking over as Prime Minister from the NDA
government in the aftermath of the 2002 post-Godhra riots and a surcharged communal
atmosphere, Singh’s administration brought in a sense of balance in the
situation.A renowned economist, his governments also delivered a robust 8.5 per
cent GDP growth for most of his tenure but the scams–2G, CWG and Coal block
allocations–and the resultant policy paralysis of the government stymied his
performance.
UPA II could never come out
of the rut, a point the corporates initially and the BJP PM candidate Narendra
Modi exploited to the hilt to attack the government. Ironically, a man whose personal
honesty has never been questioned came to preside over a government that
was marked by a series of scams.The perceived dual power centre in the Congress
in the form of power vesting with party chief Sonia Gandhi also came to haunt
him with critics attacking him as the weakest Prime Minister the country has
had.Books by his former media adviser Sanjaya Baru and some other bureaucrats
have only helped to highlight such a charge.However, Singh has maintained that
history will be kinder to him than the current assessments.Singh’s rise to the
top highlights what a man with a humble background can achieve in Indian
democracy.
एक टिप्पणी भेजें