A Public Policy View of ‘Accidental Prime Minister’ by Sanjaya Baru

Governance has increased in complexity over the years. Therefore, public policy studies have gained importance. One of the global leaders in the studies in public policy is the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. I am currently at the Maxwell School for a two-week program. Writing from this institution, this blog is a public policy view of the book Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru.

People’s lives, gets impacted by the policies shaped by the governments. Public policy as a discipline studies the processes involved in policy making. As an academic discipline, public policy is a relatively new subject. The disciplinisation of the subject happens in the esoteric word of universities far away from the confines of the bureaucracy dominated government environs. Whatever the theorists may say, the real world of policy making is far removed from esoteric world of theories. Baru’s book gives us a peep into the world of realpolitik surrounding decision making processes.

Policies get framed amidst various pulls, pressures and counter pressures which happens in any democratic system. Yet, the public seldom gets chance to understand the forces that played out while shaping the policies, unless those involved in policy making, narrate the events. In India, those in the know of things, particularly the bureaucrats who were involved in policymaking, are bound by Official Secrets Act. They seldom have the freedom to record the events that led to decisions and the forces that have acted upon in the shaping of policies. The classical paradigm is that a bureaucrat is a faceless, behind the scenes performer. In general, the Official Secrets Act and the training of the civil servants make them work in near total anonymity, though there may be few exceptions.

                

The consequence is near total absence of documented material on policymaking processes in India. Such documentation would contribute to the development of public policy as a discipline. The situation is different in the United States where the persons who held governmental offices have written their own account of the work they have done, with a number of books available in the public domain. Even about most sensitive of the assignments like capture of Bin Laden, and the decision making process involved therein has been documented in a well readable book written by Mark Owen, titled, NoEasy Day. I had mentioned about this book in an earlier blog.

It is in this context that one views the importance of Sanjaya Baru’s book, The Accidental Prime Minister and is tempted to write this blog. This book as a good text to understand the some of the policies that may have an indelible impact on India’s history. It is unfortunate that the book is noticed more for the controversy surrounding it, which is a probable sales gimmick. More about the controversy in later paragraphs.

Media Advisors

Every Prime Minister of India appoints a Media Advisor. The Media Advisor is often the Prime Minister’s mouthpiece to the world. Since the image of a public figure is often shaped by the media image, Media Advisor’s traditionally has assumed great importance.  The post was occupied by doyens in Indian journalism like Kuldip Nayyar, B G Varghese, Prem Shankar Jha and H K Dua but none of them wrote about their time in PMO. The only probable exception is H Y Sharada Prasad, the information advisor and speechwriter to Mrs Indira Gandhi, who wrote a newspaper column about his experiences. Compare this with United States or Britain where press secretaries to the President and Prime Minister have written freely about their jobs and bosses. 

Sanjaya Baru was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s media advisor during his first term in office. He worked closely with him and had been a witness of many important events that shaped the first decade of 21^st century, particularly in during the first term (referred to as UPA1).

Background of Many Decisions

The book gives a first hand view of some of the significant events and the forces that shaped them. Some of these events are fresh in our own memory and it is interesting to know the forces that acted to shape them in a particular way. It enables us to get to know the currents and countercurrents that played out in important events like the Indo-US Nuclear Agreement and its ratification in the Parliament. It documents the foundational shift in India’s foreign policy under Dr Singh. It narrates the events that led to withdrawing of the Left support to UPA.

Many a times we think decisions are taken on files and is available for posterity to know. The processes that led to the decisions are indeed made outside and rarely we get to know what led to it. Manmohan Singh’s appointment of Montek Singh Alhuwalia, as Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, over the choice of Sonia Gandhi’s Veerappa Moily, shows that Dr Singh knows how to get what he wants, was not running a puppet regime, remote controlled. It shows how complex forces play out in important decisions. As per Baru,  Dr Singh convinced Surjeet Singh, the then Secretary of CPI (M) to agree to Montek’s candidature. Baru says: ‘One wily Sardar had secured the support of another wily Sardar to get a third one on board’.

The book gives a glimpse of the excellent relationship between the party president and the Prime Minister. At personal and official level, Baru states that Dr Singh and Sonia implicitly trusted each other. That didn't mean that the two did not have differences on policy matters. These were aired and resolved in private meetings and were never allowed to be trickled to public domain.

One of the institutional innovations of Dr Singh to involve his cabinet colleagues in policy making is setting up of several Group of Ministers (GoM). GoM is meant to facilitate consensual decision making in smaller groups before important policy decisions were brought to the cabinet for approval. The coalition partners were involved in the GoMs.  Scores of GoMs were set up. The GoMs were first created by Prime Minister Vajpayee. Dr Singh went one step further and created empowered GOMs (EGoM). EGoMs constituted around key policies, projects and issues became substitute for the full cabinet as they were empowered to take decisions that the Cabinet then ratified. This innovation is probably resulting out of the complexity of the issues and the decisions , which todays government has to handle that require indepth analysis. A full cabinet meeting may not have time for indepth deliberation of complex and technical subject areas and so the smaller group studies the matters and arrives at decisions. Sanjaya Baru says this effectively undermined PMs authority. I do not see how and consider that this is an appropriate response to modern day policymaking challenges. There are parallels in the Parliament where Standing Committees, smaller group of MPs takes indepth look into legislative and budget proposals of the departments and these views are later endorsed by Parliament. 

Dr Singh was not just an academic economist. The book gives some insight into the thinking of Dr Singh on welfare measures. Keynes and Keynesians in India, such as K N Raj, shaped his political economic outlook. The farm loan waiver of 2008 came out of this outlook. Dr Singh’s understanding of Indian farm economics was shaped by the historical experience of Punjab where he was born to an agricultural family. Baru quotes Malcom Darling, a distinguished British civil servant who worked in undivided Punjab, about its farmers: “The Indian peasant is born in debt, lives in debt and dies in debt.” The farmers who had committed suicide were not impoverished or landless but were landowners who were crushed by debt. The policy debate went on in government for several months. Mainstream economists felt that wavers are fraught with moral hazard. But farmers had to be released from the vicious debt cycle which was driving them to suicide. A debt waiver for farmers though led to personal benefit, was a public good as it ensured social stability.  Manmohan Singh had studied the precedents which pointed to a farm loan waiver every thirty years.  It was Dr Singh who took the final call to waive the farm debt and the policy was announced in the 2008 budget.

Indo US Nuclear Deal

The book has a separate chapter that discusses the events that led to the 123 Agreement with US. With some real inside information of the happenings behind the scene, it reflects the extent of the personal commitment of Mr Bush and Manmohan Singh to the deal. While Dr Singh’s push for it is known in India, little is known about President Bush’s role. Enormous pressure was exerted by the non-proliferationist congressmen, particularly in the democratic party against the deal. Time was running out. Mr John Kerry, visiting as the Chairman of US Senate Committee on foreign relations, with Joseph Biden (later Vice President) and Chuck Hagel, though a democrat himself, made clear that a future democratic president, Mrs Clinton or Mr. Obama would not do what Mr Bush was willing to do for India. They informed about a political urgency. If the deal was not concluded before end July, 2008, US Congress would not be able to approve it before the Presidential election in US. ‘The three leaders confirmed what Dr Singh always knew, that if there was any chance of India getting a nuclear deal, it was only because President Bush wanted to do it’. This conversation led Dr Singh to get the deal out of the ‘policy treadmill- only motion but no movement forward’, which the deal had got into after 2007.

The book gives an indication behind the US thinking on the policy change. The 9/11 attacks and later the specter of Jehadi terrorism had changed the conventional US view towards India.

Moreover, the inexorable rise of China was beginning to alter not just the Asian balance of power but also the global balance of power. Helping a democracy like India to become stronger would enable it to deal with the threat of Islamic radicalism and the rise of China. The US had a stake in this outcome.

Dr Singh new what it meant for India. Talking impromptu to probationers of Indian Foreign Service Prime Minister Singh said that the deal,

“…opens up new opportunities for civilian cooperation and without that, I think, the trade in dual technologies-sensitive advanced technologies-cannot become a reality. But our domestic policies have prevented us from going ahead…It is very important for us to move ahead to end the nuclear apartheid that the world has sough to impose on India.”

The chapter details the differences that India had to deal within its own nuclear establishment and how Manmohan Singh skillfully managed the process. It show the efforts that were made to convince the Left and how the intransigent stand of Mr Prakash Karat, Secretary CPI (M) led to the withdrawal of left support, and the events that followed.

Reading the narratives of the events that led to the deal, one realizes that it would not have fruitioned without the personal involvement and commitment of the two leaders, Dr Singh and Mr Bush. The Indo US Nuclear deal was an opportunity that history presented with a short window and Dr Singh grabbed that opportunity ending India’s nuclear isolation.

This compulsive page turner chapter is also a lesson in leadership which ought to be taught in leadership classes.

Foreign Policy:

Dr Singh has left an indelible, long lasting mark on India’s foreign policy. Little is known to the general public about the shift brought about by Dr Singh to India’s foreign policy approach. He has given a definitive shift to the nation's foreign policy. This was based, according to Baru, on Nehruvian realism, as told by Nehru to the Constituent Assembly in December 1947:

Whatever policy we may lay down the art of conducting the foreign affairs of the country lies in finding out what is most advantageous to the country.

Dr Singh was guided by this perspective in defining his worldview. The elements that guided his foreign policy was laid out in his speech at the Hindustan Times Summit in 2004 and the India Today conclave on February 2005. The well known strategic affairs analyst C Raja Mohan dubbed the new approach as Manmohan Singh doctrine in his article titled ‘Rethinking India’s grand Strategy’.

The essential component of Manmohan Singh doctrine of India’s foreign policy is as below:

i.                India’s relations with the world, both major powers and Asian neighbors would be shaped by its own developmental priorities. Its objective will be to create a ‘global environment conducive to her economic development and the well being of the people of India’.

ii.              India would benefit from greater integration with the world economy and the Asian Economy. He envisaged a future Asian Economic Community.

iii.               India’s relation with major powers, namely US and even China are shaped by economic factors and the concern for energy security is an important element of this diplomacy.

iv.             India’s experiment of pursuing economic development within the framework of a plural secular and liberal democracy holds lessons for the world and we must engage the world through the ‘idea of India’.

v.              The experience of democracy like India should help enabling societies in transition to evolve into open, inclusive, plural, democratic societies.

In the long cold war years India was putting forward its anti colonial, non aligned and socialist credentials, rather than democratic credentials, which Dr Singh changed. Baru says that Dr Singh never mentioned ‘non alignment’ in his foreign policy speeches. But, see the following extract.

 “Our steadfast commitment to democracy, to building a multiethnic, multi religious, multicultural democracy based on respect of fundamental human rights and the rule of law gives us a unique place in our era. All nations of the world will function one day on these very principles of liberal pluralist democracy”. 

He sought to improve India’s relations with all major foreign powers, especially the US and China, with all of India’s economic partners, especially East and South East Asian economies, and with India’s neighbors. He pushed the ideas of economic interdependence, the irrelevance of borders, and the importance of strategic partnerships defined by economic interests. This foreign policy approach builds bridges of mutual interdependence with the world.

The book also shows Manmohan Singh’s faith in the people of India and how this shaped foreign policy decisions. When the Iran nuclear issue came up for vote in UN, there were concerns about voting preferences of Inda’s Shia community on the grounds that they felt an affiliation with Shia majority Iran. Dr Singh refused to accept the view that the Shia community would not support an initiative which is in eh interest of the nation. ‘They were Indians first and as patriotic as any other community, he pointed out to those who raised the issues.

The leitmotif of Manmohan Singh doctrine is emphasis on India’s economic interests, its economic relations with other Asian economies, other developing and developed economies. But, Dr Singh reminds: India must do what it must at home for it to be able to deal more confidently with the world.

The changes brought about by Dr Singh to India’s foreign policy is truly far reaching and brings our foreign policy to the 21^st century.

India-Pakistan: A Slip between cup and lip

The book also tells how tantalizingly close Manmohan Singh was to securing a peace deal with Pakistan. Sadly the events in Pakistan overturned this historical opportunity.

The contours of a peace deal had been agreed with President (General) Musharaf. At the core of the proposal is what is now known as Manmohan Singh doctrine, which he let it be called as Musharaf doctrine.  The essentials of the doctrine are detailed in a speech made by Dr Singh in Punjabi at a public rally at Amritsar:

I have often said that borders cannot be redrawn but we can work  making them irrelevant- towards making them just lines on the map. People on both sides of the LOC should be able to move more freely and trade with one another. I also envisage a situation where the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir can, with the active encouragements of the governments of India and Pakistan, work out cooperative, consultative mechanisms so as to maximize the gains of cooperation in solving problems of social and economic development of the region.

The broad agreement on this proposition exists even today. Unfortunately the changed political environment in Pakistan, which Baru describes, and later the event in India prevented Dr Singh from cementing the deal. Baru says:

Not completing the process he began will surely remain his greatest regret. However, whenever the two countries find a lasting solution to their disputes, I have little doubt, it will be along the lines that Dr Singh had envisioned with Musharaf.

Branding the PM

The chapter titled Brand Manmohan show the important role that Media Advisors play in shaping the brand of the PM. Baru had insights into the journalist world and his skills helped diffusion of the information relating to the personality of Dr Singh and the key decisions which showed his assertiveness. The chapter starts with a quote from Dr Singh

There is no foundation for the insinuation that there are two power centres. I am the Prime Minister.

The absence of a Media Advisor like Mr Baru hurt the brand Manmohan in UPA 2. Baru says that Dr Singh’s ‘silences’ and his unwillingness to project himself became more manifest un UPA-2 and were more widely commented upon. This is were a good media advisor could have filled a void, is the feeling one gets from reading the book. As crises unfolded in UPA2, according to Baru, 

“…the inherent weakness of the political arrangement were revealed, among them the poor administrative leadership in the PMO and an unimaginative political and media strategy in response to the challenges.” 

The Controversy:

What made this book a matter of intense public discussion is the controversy surrounding it, which mainly implied that Manmohan Singh was a remote controlled Prime Minister with real power with Sonia Gandhi, Congress President. I am personally a little surprised about this and have started to doubt the veracity of this criticism after reading the book, as the book itself lists a number of occasions where Dr Singh differed with Mrs Sonia Gandhi and had his way. There are examples in the book where Dr Singh did not accept the suggestion of Mrs Gandhi on policy and even appointment matters, which would otherwise have been politically expedient for congress party.

An example is the Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN. Baru describes that Mrs Gandhi had written to PM not to proceed with it, probably because it was a major concern for farmers in states like Kerala who were traditional congress supporters. Dr Singh wrote back defending FTA, explaining:

Our approach to regional trade agreements in general, and FTAs in particular, has been evolved after careful consideration of our geo political as well as our economic interests. Although India has a large domestic market, our experience with earlier relatively insular policies as also the global experience in this regard clearly bring out our growth potential of trade and economic cooperation with global economy.  

This is one example and there are several such others which throws light on thinking behind important policy matters.

The controversy has arisen probably out of the Epilogue of the book where Baru discusses Singh’s interest in appointing him again in PMO and the opposition that it faced from Congress party. The blurb of the book gives just one quote from Dr Singh discussed in the epilogue: ‘You see, you must understand one thing. I have come to terms with this. There cannot be two centers of power’. The book was released just prior to the national elections and such quotes were much subject of public discussion. This would have definitely helped sale of the book.

The epilogue is more personal and diluted the public policy component of the book. One wishes, Baru had crafted the book as a public policy text, without going into personal appointments and disappointments. My feeling is that the key chapters were written while Baru was teaching at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the last chapter and the epilogue added later. That probably explains why one part is more academic and other not.

Overall

The language used by Baru is simple. The important events of Prime Minister Singh’s first term are described in detail and with clarity. It gives lot of material to study for a student of public policy, weaving politics, policy and administration with fine text of language. There is a flow in the book which makes it a page turner. A recommended reading for all interested not just in policy studies but also in India’s contemporary history.