Dr Singh deserves a befitting memorial

Resuming my column after the Xmas break, I look back at the happenings in our country during the past few weeks. The distinct brand of democracy that is taking root in India was on display within the new Parliament building and outside. Elected members came to blows, a feature of some parliaments in the Far East.

Outside the building’s precincts, a Virat Kohli-like shove was attempted by Rahul Gandhi on a BJP elder. Virat’s target on the cricket ground resumed his innings after the encounter. Rahul’s opponent found himself in a hospital, chattering about the strength of the younger man pitted against him.

While the country watched the antics of our elected representatives, their party bosses got into a slanging match in poll-bound Delhi. The verbal duel has graduated to a poster war between the BJP and AAP, with the two opponents denigrating each other in print. We are amused and disgusted simultaneously, and in equal measure.

Mercifully, there was the proverbial silver lining. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra delivered her maiden speech in the Lok Sabha. In fact, she opened the Opposition’s arguments on disrespect to the Constitution. She also mentioned the vituperative attacks on her great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, the bête noire of the present dispensation. She spoke well and sensibly too. She resurrected a flicker of hope for the return of decency and substance to proceedings in Parliament, as was prevalent in the times of Pandit Nehru.

An extremely decent human being, who was our Prime Minister for a decade, breathed his last in a hospital in Delhi. Dr Manmohan Singh was truly respected not only in Punjab and the North, from where he hailed, but also in other parts of the country where perceptive citizens ferret out decent and credible leaders when they perceive the existence of such a rare specimen.

It was not as a Sikh but as a Congress leader and the Prime Minister that Manmohan Singh apologised to the Sikh community for the injustices heaped upon them after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. Such a gesture of humility and contrition was not attempted by the Congress government in Maharashtra after the slaughter of Muslims in Mumbai in 1993 or by the BJP in Gujarat in 2002.

I had occasion to interact with Dr Singh during my years in service and later. Two such occasions remain etched in memory. The first arose when the IPS Officers’ Association asked me to meet the PM to plead its case when the Pay Commission’s recommendations were being considered by the Union Government.

I had retired by then and set up home in Mumbai, the city of my birth. I asked the officer who had spoken to me on the phone why that was necessary when the PM’s own son-in-law was a member of our service. The officer replied that the son-in-law would not dare to broach the subject to the PM. In a country where nepotism is an accepted evil, the thought that the PM was beyond such weaknesses was certainly exhilarating.

After the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, famous lyricist and screenwriter Javed Akhtar and influential Marathi journalist Kumar Ketkar asked me to accompany them to Delhi to meet the PM to discuss the repercussions of this incident for the polity.

Dr Singh listened carefully to each of us. I spoke about inter-community relations and how civil society in my city was involved in finding acceptable solutions. He obviously took my suggestions to heart because when I arrived back at Mumbai’s airport, the Chief Minister sent an emissary to request me to drive straight to his residence to discuss with him the suggestions I had made to the PM.

Dr Singh was an attentive listener. He acted on ideas if he perceived some merit in them. He was not merely humble; his credibility was high. It is true that his sense of decency sometimes worked against him. The scams that were reported during his second term in office were a result of his reluctance to discipline colleagues, especially those from other political parties which were part of the coalition government. Narendra Modi scores much better than him in the ability to manage coalition partners.

An unseemly row has erupted between the Congress and the BJP about the site of a memorial to honour the former PM’s contribution to the country and its people. Dr Singh was the only non-politician to rise to this pedestal. He did not command a following among citizens like other Prime Ministers did to a larger or smaller degree. But he deserves a monument in marble to remind us of the man who opened our economy and lifted crores of Indians to the ranks of the middle income groups from near-poverty levels.

In Maharashtra, the BJP-led coalition is wrestling with the financial downside of the Ladki Bahin project, which literally took Mahayuti over the finishing line in the 2024 Assembly elections. A massive exercise is afoot to ascertain the eligibility of crores of applicants whom the scheme was not supposed to cover. Half of the would-be beneficiaries will find themselves deprived of the promised largesse. They are bound to grumble. In the meantime, the Agriculture Minister is finding it hard to pacify farmers who were promised loan waivers, which the treasury cannot accommodate at present.

‘Grumbling’ was the word most in evidence when the state’s Cabinet was to be formed. The number of aspirants for ministerial status exceeded the figure permitted by law. The 41 MLAs belonging to Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction and the 57 from Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena had a tough time concluding who should be in and who could be left out. This is a common occurrence that has been experienced earlier, but this time around, the aspirational levels had risen so sharply that it took a month after the election results to arrive at a solution.

The police establishment will be forced to part with many more personnel to provide security (status, really) to the 40-odd Ministers. Status and importance are what they all crave for. Some, of course, are in search of ‘creamy’ portfolios! It will be difficult for CM Devendra Fadnavis to please them all. I reckon it will be a test of his leadership skills.