Friday, January 27, 2017

Teflon Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh has been doubly fortunate. When he was the finance minister in Narasimha Rao's cabinet, we entered the era of economic reforms which were initiated by the prime minister. The credit however went to Manmohan Singh. Singh never had the courtesy to acknowledge that Narasimha Rao was the trigger. Singh basked and continues to bask in the reflected glory.

From 2004 to 2014 when Singh was the accidental prime minister, many scams took place, most of them criminal. Whenever a crime became public, some ministers or officials were deemed guilty. Singh was always deemed innocent . He would never be investigated. The dictum was: "The king and Singh can do no wrong."

Manmohan Singh's apparent involvement in the Vijay Mallya scam is now the talk of the town. The NDA government which came to power promising good governance and punishment for the guilty does not deem it necessary to investigate the teflon leader. Norms of accountability require that Singh is investigated without any further loss of time for his malignant role in many misdeeds. The reason is simple: 1) If he proves that multiple shenanigans were committed at the behest of somebody else (almost everyone believes Sonia Gandhi was the initiator / beneficiary of several scams), that somebody has to be identified and punished by law, 2) If it is proved that Singh himself was responsible for venality, he has to be put behind bars and 3) if Singh was totally uninvolved in all the scams, he needs to be reprimanded for callous inefficiency.

Whatever be the facts, it is ridiculous that ten years of misrule were tolerated by the nation and law is made to appear helpless. Narendra Modi, despite his assurances of fair play, is setting a bad precedent in letting the former prime minister go uninvestigated and therefore unpunished. We can find out who was responsible for multiple scams only if Singh is investigated thoroughly. However, this is not going to happen. Singh and Modi seem to have a tacit agreement. Modi has to realise that letting a criminal go scot-free is a crime in itself.

1 comment:

K.R.Srivarahan said...

Singh is doubly fortunate because he got appreciation for someone else's contribution and he was never blamed for his own inadequacies or connivance.