Asian Window

As Indian heads for an election, Tehelka in a special issue analyses five years of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister:

The Shadow Warrior by Tarun J. Tejpal, Editor of Tehelka:

The simple way for history to read the unusual Sikh is to say the Bible was right. The meek will inherit the earth – and sometimes the meek will also be decent and efficient. There can be no dispute about that – his decency and efficiency. Yet, laudable traits as they are, they are also routinely found in army officers, film technicians and swayamsewaks. In the leader of a billion people you may want to look for more. Vision, inspiration, courage, will, statecraft – the ability to articulate the soul of a people, to bend the arc of history to a higher note. Execution and implementation are indispensably wonderful things, but there are sound men to do that, bureaucrats and technocrats, economists and social workers – all of them excellent masons and carpenters constructing the edifice the architect has ordained. More:

The Turnaround Man by Sanjaya Baru who was Manmohan Singh’s media advisor:

Consider the facts. In 1991, India was on the verge of economic bankruptcy, and one of its key strategic allies, the Soviet Union, had just disappeared. There was domestic political turmoil, with the Indian National Congress forced to form a minority government after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. This came barely six years after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. No analyst would have regarded India a ‘rising power’ of the 21st century. Yet, presenting his first Budget to Parliament in July 1991, Manmohan Singh dared to predict that the idea of India as a rising economic power was “an idea whose time had come”. The rest, as they say, is history. More:

The Professor’s Empty Class, in which Swapan Dasgupta provides the view from the Right:

Any assessment of Manmohan’s stint must proceed with the recognition that India’s most non-political Prime Minister succeeded in the most politically daunting challenge before him: he carried his bat through the entire innings. It is conceivable that he succeeded precisely because he never deviated from his contrived unconcern with day-to-day politics. He was careful to never pose any threat to the politicians, and they, in turn, were happy to leave him undisturbed. Had he developed political ambitions midway – and it is so easy to acquire delusions of grandeur in a rarefied environment – he would undoubtedly have been a member of the other club of Prime Ministers who left prematurely. More:

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