News for our times. Ratan Tata’s plain speaking in anguish… His three important messages… (1) There are leaders (Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram) who I have respected all through my life for their public life. But something has happened that has diffused this leadership. We don’t have leadership that we have been talking about, that is leading from the front. (2) We should have one view.. the team has been pulling in different directions; allies are pulling in different directions, many States are pulling in different directions, many heads of the portfolios in the government are pulling in different directions. We are not any longer looking ourselves as one India” he said on pressure groups within the government. (3) I think in Gujarat Modi has provided his leadership and he has moved Gujarat into a position of prominence. I am not in a position to gaze what he would do in a country. Everyone can have their own opinions and Ratan Tata has been our most respected and respectable industrialist cum CEO in a long, long time. One would say that his point No.2 is the most determining factor that has plunged our economy in general and the rupee in a mess. Whatever their legion of critics might say, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Chidambram are the best in the country; while Singh is one of our foremost and peerless economists, Chidambaram, though a lawyer by profession, has been the Finance portfolio with distinction. One criticism against Singh is he rarely speaks, but then there are the well-known adages, from speaking comes repentance or regret, and from listening, wisdom; deeds should speak louder than words; it’s better to keep silent and thought a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubts. When it’s a coalition government and there are intra-party (within the main partner, Congress) or –coalition partners and inter-parties’ wrangle over every issue or decision, and often the cabinet ministers – belonging to Congress or to coalition partners stick to their guns firmly or when one of the coalition partners threaten to pull out over a key economic issue jeopardizing the very survival of the government, the PM is in a hopelessly helpless state and the issue is jettisoned or heavily watered down. The PM may be a good economist but is a political lightweight; because he lacks charisma (as Sonia has) that alone fetches votes at the husting and enable congressmen to get elected and hold ministerial portfolios his writ doesn’t seem to run among his own ministers from the Congress Party, let alone among the coalition partners. What the country desperately needs is a charismatic leader with some authoritarian streak (as Indira Gandhi had) because we are otherwise an undisciplined and unruly and manageable nation of people. Such a leader can never rise in India what with the country getting more fractured and fragmented on caste and/or linguistic lines. Modi (and Jayalalitha) has strong leadership and business-like qualities with lots of common sense to pull the country from its economic and administrative mess, but let’s admit, the BJP has no ghost of a chance of getting a clear majority mandate from the people. And if he has to depend on other parties for forming a coalition government, he will turn out be equally a lame duck. So? We as a country are destined to muddle through…
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 08:41:29 +0000
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