Delhi Diary/By A K B Krishnan

Tell-all memoirs by senior politicians, bureaucrats or veteran advisers are nothing new in Western democracies, but the recent release of two memoirs - Sanjaya Baru’s account of the four years he spent as media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former coal ministry secretary P C Parakh’s ringside revelations on the “Coalgate” scam that scarred the country - and yet another eagerly awaited one by ex-CAG Vinod Rai are indications that India is catching up with the West in this well-established genre in book writing.
While the tittle-tattle feature of Baru’s book The Accidental Prime Minister seeks to hurt the PM’s public standing and aims to “expose” the Congress and its leader Sonia Gandhi in the election season, Parakh’s Crusader Or Conspirator? shows how the PM and the PMO were virtually powerless in bringing to book a minister keen on browbeating civil servants into flouting the rule book. Both the books from men who had direct access to the prime minister take the readers to the heart of the institutional decay in India’s governance systems.
What added extra spice to Baru’s book was the intemperate reaction of the Congress. He was dubbed a “betrayer, a job-seeker and an agent of Narendra Modi. His disclosures were debunked by the very PMO, where he once served, as a fanciful “work of fiction.” Baru, who depicts the prime minister as a man not in control of the affairs of the high office he held, has left himself open to the PMO’s charge that he is trying to get even with the establishment because he could not get a second shot in office.
Baru had quit the PMO a little before the end of Singh’s first term and taken up a teaching assignment in Singapore. Shortly after the UPA returned to power in 2009, Singh wanted Baru to return to the PMO. They negotiated, but Baru says his return fell through because of political pressure from the Congress top brass. “To tell the truth, I was dismayed by the PM’s display of spinelessness, even after this handsome victory. If he was unable to make appointments in his own office, he was ‘yielding space’ too soon.”
Although the book became a talking point for politicians and the media in the middle of a heated election campaign, it somehow projected Singh’s side of the story too, not exactly exalting him, but clearly explaining his prolonged predicament. Right from selecting his principal secretary to deciding on major policy matters, rightly or wrongly the prime minister has been reliant on Sonia Gandhi who often usurped his powers.  
But, as BJP leader Arun Jaitley tweeted, nothing in the book is unknown. Who called the tune, and who meekly played second fiddle have all been talk of the town from one end of the country to the other. Who did not know that the Congress president used her political secretary, Ahmed Patel, and her chosen loyalists in the Prime Minister’s Office and cabinet to call the shots in matters ranging from the appointment of individuals to positions of power and influence to interference in the formulation of policies?
Who did not know that a cabal, christened as the National Advisory Council, along with some sidekicks of the Congress president, were happily exercising those powers, without any accountability to the constitution and its various organs? What Baru and Parakh have merely provided are confirmatory details of the palace “secrets” that added spice and salt to the political menu at every dinner table talk of the last several years.
What the public also witnessed throughout the two terms of the UPA rule was the rare show of camaraderie being put out for public view periodically. Sonia heaped praise on Singh for his vision, leadership qualities and personal integrity while the latter, in turn, went to an embarrassing extent to return the compliment. But hardly anyone doubted that this mutual adulation was an elaborate charade to mask the reality and make everything appear hunky-dory.
Singh was a willing player of the accidental role cast for him. Baru says: “Many… believe that in not asserting the authority inherent in his office he… devalued it… His willingness to be pushed around by his party and coalition partners and… to have his decisions publicly challenged by Rahul Gandhi, irretrievably damaged his image.” For Singh, there cannot be two centres of power. He believes the party president is the centre of power and he, therefore, deliberately subordinated himself to Sonia Gandhi.
The opposition as well as the media have frequently been criticising the government for its poor governance and policy paralysis. The prime minister, after the selection of his core team of people, should have held onto the reins and commanded them with conviction. He should have made the party members fully accountable to the government and to the people of India. In politics, it is not just what one does but also what one fails to do that one is defined by eventually. Passivity can be culpability at times.
Baru also records crucial occasions when Singh stood his ground and rejected Sonia Gandhi’s view. Yes, one of them is the most quoted example of the US nuclear treaty which made Singh the King. Almost all parties, including sections of his own, were against it, but the prime minister stuck to his guns and had his way. But the one time the regime stood up to be counted is really the exception that proves the rule. If the PM has been subservient to Sonia then she and her party must be blamed for putting him in that position.
Now fearing an unpredictable electoral verdict and a possible change of the political weather, the people from the accidental prime minister’s team appear to be running for cover. But if one strains to look at one of the longest serving prime ministers in a fairer manner, it was not Singh’s failures alone that stand out. It was the ‘office’ of the prime minister, all his men and the party leadership that failed him, and the country.