Third cut is the deepest
Vinod Rai's Not Just an Accountant: The Diary of the Nation's Conscience Keeper is the third in the UPA book trilogy that has rocked India this year. Each has systematically chipped away at Manmohan Singh's legacy.
The first, Sanjaya Baru's The Accidental Prime Minister explained how Sonia Gandhi held the reigns of UPA-1 and UPA-2 and controlled everything - from appointments to the Cabinet to the clearances of files. Well-meaning though Baru's book was, it confirmed everyone's worst suspicions - Manmohan had undermined the highest office of the land. (Read my piece in India Today on Baru's book: Why Manmohan Singh failed.)
The second, Natwar Singh's One Life is Not Enough, showed how Manmohan Singh was not responsbile even for what the nation thought was his finest hour - the Indo-US nuclear agreement, which Natwar Singh insisted was his doing, quoting no less than Condoleeza Rice. (Read my piece in India Today on Natwar's book: The truth about Sonia.)
Rai's book lays the blame squarely on the prime minister, and shows how on at least four significant occasions of national interest, Manmohan Singh just did not exercise the power vested in his office.
#1. Manmohan did nothing even when helpful colleagues threw him a lifeline: On 2G he did not stop A Raja even when Kamal Nath warned him on November 3, 2007, and gave him the option of setting up a GoM, and even when Raja wrote to him on November 15, 2007, informing him that he would continue with the first-come-first-served option. Instead, as he points out, Manmohan Singh sent him a reply on November 21, 2007, saying merely that he had received his letter "regarding the recent developments in the telecom sector". As Rai says, "If only the prime minister Manmohan Singh had responded differently; if only he had instead said - "I have received your letter of 26 December 2006. Please do not take any precipitate action till we or the GoM have discussed this.'' Such a letter would have changed the course of UPA-2." He underlines it by repeating the famous noting on January 11, 2007, by joint secretary Vini Mahajan that the prime minister "does not want a formal communication and wants PMO to be arm's length".
#2. Manmohan did nothing, even when his bureaucrats alerted him to wrongdoing: He allowed his ministers to defy him, whether it was on Coalgate where a minister, Shibu Soren, chose to concur with his minister of state, and defy him; or on the purchase of Boeings by Air India, which was done by minister Praful Patel, even though on both issues he had sufficient warning from bureaucrats, PC Parakh and Sunil Arora respectively. Rai points to a landmark meeting in the PMO on a new procedure for coal allocation on July 25, 2005, which was overturned by his ministers. And on Air India, Rai refers to a letter Arora wrote to then cabinet secretary BK Chaturvedi on May 28, 2005, where he drew attention to "how certain critical decisions were being taken at Indian Airlines based on the directions of the minister, civil aviation"'.
#3. Manmohan did nothing, even when external watchdogs, from the CAG to the media, warned him he should: The classic case was the preparations for the Commonwealth Games, where CAG's July 2009 report, sparked by reports in the media on the tardy progress of the Games, should have alerted the prime minister on the lack of preparation. Instead, says Rai, Manmohan Singh chose to "shoot the messenger". "History will be kinder to me than the media", Manmohan Singh said in what was to be his farewell press conference in January. His daughter Daman Singh's affectionate memoir, Strictly Personal, which covered everything, but the critical ten years as prime minister, was certainly kinder and gentler. But Rai's book has effectively blown his cover.
Neither Sonia Gandhi, nor Rahul, Manmohan Singh has only himself to blame.