Manmohan Singh’s mantra

India will have a new foreign secretary in less than a month, but the truth is that little will move unless Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government can end the perception that things are falling apart.

It’s tough, I guess, to be prime minister if you have someone looking over your shoulder all the time. Already, the Congress party is making noises about the need for Rahul Gandhi to take charge, insisting that in a young country like India, where half the population is below 35 years of age, you need a younger prime minister.

Truth is, Manmohan Singh is touching 77 or 78, while young Rahul has crossed his 40^th birthday. (You could argue that that’s not very young, but in our part of the world if you haven’t tied the knot, I suppose, all’s fair in love and language.)

On the face of it, India’s economy is growing at a respectable 7-8 per cent, especially when you compare it with the US, which is verging on a default, or the UK where growth continues to be a meagre 1.5 per cent. The monsoons have been good so far and the granaries are full (overflowing, actually). From being a recipient of western handouts in the sixties to handing out cheques to Afghanistan and Africa — $500 million each in the last month — India’s self-esteem quotient has come a long way.

Why, then, does the nagging persist within? There is a strong sense that all is not right with the republic. The Congress-led government has refused to lead and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led opposition has failed its own imagination. The left parties, whose biggest service was to restrain the government’s market-fuelled instincts in Manmohan Singh’s last government, have been more or less marginalised.

Despite his interaction with the country’s top editors this week, the PM was frank about the challenges India faces, from the economy to Maoism to foreign policy initiatives in the neighbourhood.

Still, the impression one came away with from reading the transcript of the interaction was not that the prime minister lacked either courage or ability or personal integrity — despite the sense of dissonance that prevails nationally, Manmohan Singh continues to be on top of the charts — but that he seemed unable to put things into first gear.

Look at the neighbourhood, for instance. There is the comment that as prime minister, he “would love to visit Pakistan, I was born there… I would especially like to go to Panja Sahib where my parents took me to be named”. Manmohan Singh goes on to add that Pakistan hasn’t done enough on the terror front.

The implication: What’s the point of going?

This is an apt analysis. After the Mumbai 2008 attacks, which changed India in so many ways, the visit of an Indian prime minister to Pakistan will carry so much weight — or baggage, as the case may be — that if Islamabad doesn’t deal with the Mumbai attackers in a serious way, everything else will be on hold.

My point is simple: What prevents the political leadership in India and Pakistan from changing the contours of the game? If Islamabad can rediscover some of its steel vis-à-vis Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, at the risk of being facetious, Delhi will be ready to build a steel plant.

Every student of history knows that leaders succeed because they focus on one thing at a time. They don’t let the scenery distract you.

Manmohan Singh made his mark when he unleashed India’s entrepreneurial instincts in 1991. The problem is, this is 2011.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2011.