Author: Akshaya Mishra
Publication: Firstpost.com
Date: July 17, 2012
URL: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/poodle-underachiever-ah-pm-how-much-more-can-you-take-379492.html
If history is right, Time mag might have done PM a favour
The only time ones notices Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wearing a smile is when he is amid presidents and prime ministers of Western countries, far off the country’s shores. They sort of fawn on him, make a big fuss about him being a great economist and allow him to have his say on economic matters. He peels off the smile on his way back home and puts on the morose look.
He has reason to. They are not charitable enough to him at home. The opposition calls him ‘weak’, ‘spineless’ and ‘an overrated economist’. The media keeps harping on him being a failure on all fronts, policy, governance and what not. The Congress guys keep reminding him that he is keeping the seat warm for Rahul Gandhi and his school of economics is not what the Congress school of economics is.
The only place where he discovered bliss and happiness is offshore. Now, they are out to spoil that too. A week earlier, Time magazine called him an ‘underachiever’, now UK-based publication, The Independent, calls him ‘Sonia’s poodle’. Given our media’s penchant to get overwhelmed by whatever rubbish the big publications in the US or UK come up with about the country, he should be worried. He has nowhere to hide now. Next time he goes out journalists will make his life miserable.
To put matters in perspective, the magazines don’t belong to countries of ‘overachieving’ leaders. The economy of the US is in bigger mess than India’s, only the rating agencies would be coy to admitting to that. The UK is not going great guns as an economy either and between them the countries account for more than half the mess the world is in today. And as the quality of observations go, any of these publications hardly come up with anything enlightening about India and are rarely rippling with blazing journalistic quality.
Manmohan has no genuine political power, the article says, adding “he owes his position to Sonia Gandhi, widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, mother of Rahul and Congress Party chairwoman, who to the delight of India’s middle class selected him for that role when her party won a surprise victory in 2004″. “His reforming zeal has evaporated and slowed the country’s growth, while political opponents say he has overseen an administration that has revealed itself to be mired in corruption,” it further says. The Time magazine had said something similar too.
Amazingly original, one must admit. Haven’t we heard all this before? Any Indian publication worth its salt has been saying the same, probably worse, things about the prime minister for some time now. The good thing about the Indian media’s response this time is it has treated the comments in the periodical with the disdain they deserve. For a change, there are no television panel discussions. It is possible that The Independent is not held in the same esteem as Time magazine by the journalist fraternity here.
Now coming back to poor Manmohan Singh, what does he do now? There seems to be no end to the sophisticated gaalis targeted at him. Worse, he doesn’t know where is it coming from next. Some publication in Ethiopia might suddenly find him ‘weak’ and call him a ‘lame duck’ prime minister. The reason cited will be the same: he is handpicked by Sonia Gandhi and thus does not have a voice of his own. Well, he must do something about it, not about Sonia — he cannot do much here. Maybe he should get down to what the international leaders respect him for: getting a malfunctioning economy in order.
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