After a decade in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is ready to hang his boots. He gave an elaborate, uncharacteristically long, press conference on Friday, only the third in his long stint as the Prime Minister. The PM took credit for the high growth rate achieved during his tenure but blamed the global crisis for the current slowdown.
As usual he backed Rahul Gandhi for the top job but took a harsh swipe at Narendra Modi saying it will be a disaster for the country if Modi were to become the Prime Minister. The big question is how will history judge India’s third longest-serving PM?
Also Read: Manmohan Singh confirms that survival is his greatest feat
Shobhana Bhartia, Chairperson & Editorial Director of Hindustan Times Group; Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-In-Chief of CNN-IBN, Siddharth Zarabi of CNBC-TV18 and Sunil Jain, Managing Editor of Financial Express, discuss the statements made by the Prime Minister and what they really means for the road ahead as far as the Congress and the UPA is concerned.
Below is the excerpt of the discussion
Q: Day’s of cotton wool for Rahul Gandhi are over? Come January 17 either he is the PM candidate or at least the working president?
Bhartia: I don’t think he can duck out this time. The fact that the Prime Minister had this press conference seems more to suggest that he is not going to be a contender for the third time.If you look at the press conference much of what else he said was not very relevant. So, it seems to be the purpose behind this and it seems that he would have done this at the party’s behest. Why would we have this press conference and said this unless Rahul Gandhi is going to be anointed on January 17.
Post the assembly election results we have suddenly seen a far more pro-active Rahul Gandhi speaking on subjects, reaching out, meeting selective people from the press. So, we suddenly see a huge change in the profile.If Rahul Gandhi was not going to take on the mantle I don’t think the Congress would have planned this press conference as it did today.
Q: Do you think it will leave the Congress in a better position if on January 17 they were to finally formally announce Rahul Gandhi as the PM candidate? At least as far as the cadre is concerned which is demoralised at this point in time do you believe it will make a significant difference to the Congress?
Bhartia: I do think it will make a difference. Whether that difference is going to be significant? Is it too little too late? It is something which I can’t answer but the cadre needs to know who is going to be their candidate.Even though there has been speculation about Rahul Gandhi the fact that he seemed reluctant in the past, the fact that he hasn’t come out and openly staked his claim hasn’t exactly helped. It has demoralised the cadre.
So, whether we like it or not it is bound to be more or less like a presidential face-off and the cadre needs to know who is going to be their face.The fact that Rahul Gandhi in all probability will stake his claim or the party will get him to agree to becoming the candidate on January 17 should help the party energise its cadre but I don’t know whether that is going to have a huge significant impact on the outcome of the elections because you are talking about just 3-4 months now.
Q: Incidentally, the PM said that Rahul Gandhi is the best Presidential candidate but it looks for now fairly certain that it is going to be Rahul Gandhi versus Narendra Modi come 2014 as Shobhana Bhartia was saying, perhaps too little too late on part of the Congress to try and galvanise forces but it is going to be Rahul Gandhi versus Narendra Modi?
Jain: Yes, it is going to be Rahul Gandhi versus Narendra Modi, there is no doubt about it. I think the big problem with this press conference is that Manmohan Singh just lost the opportunity to link the future of the poor with the economic growth. He talked about the government’s track record in growth, talked about the government’s track record in poverty removal of reduction. He never made a link. So to my mind that is a big significant thing from this press conference. He just tells us -- we know that Rahul Gandhi is the candidate, we knew it even before. This is just a formal announcement to something which everyone knew.
The problem with today’s press conference was that it never told you that the Congress party is going to focus on growth. It gave you the impression that it is back to those freebies.
Q: We have just had a petrol price and a diesel price hike announcement coming in a short while ago, is the fear of populism overdone?
Jain: It is so completely overdone that it is not funny because if you look at the assembly elections, the government in Rajasthan was only about freebies. Cairn gives them about Rs 5,000 crore every year of petroleum royalties, they spend all on freebies and they still lost.
The reason why they lost was that they delivered a below average gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Chhattisgarh gives you a lot of subsidies but they give you higher GDP growth. The last mini election was very clearly about telling you that subsidies don’t work, growth does. But for some reason the political class or at least the Congress party’s political class and if you look at the last few days, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), everybody is showering freebies. So when everybody is doing freebies, it is very difficult for anybody including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to talk about growth.
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