I had known former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally. He released my book “Power Profiles” in his office in PMO. A few journalist friends and then his media advisor Harish Khare were present. We talked politics of that time. I used to meet him frequently after he relinquished PM’s post at his new residence. He used to tell me that I can meet him any time. He was courteous, as usual, walked up to door to see visitors.
Manmohan Singh came to power in 2004, carrying his credential as the finance minister who transformed the economy in 1991 and the following years through his reforms measures.. But his first crisis was not in the field of economy, nor at home – it was on the lawless stand of Iraq and it called for deft and delicate diplomacy.
Indeed, his predecessor A B Vajpayee had already made it clear that India wouldn’t commit troops to Iraq, a land that Americans had occupied searching for bombs, poison gas plants and war germs labs. Not finding any, they hanged its ruler Saddam Hussain, started issuing oil contracts to the Western companies and were faced flak from the people and fire from insurgents.
Manmohan had reiterated the Vajpayee line—no troops to Iraq, even to keep peace. That was characteristic of him—no overnight overturning of predecessors’ policies, no denigrating of his predecessors even if he thought they had been wrong, and never making surprise announcements. As if guided by a sense of not speaking ill of elders, he never said a word against his predecessor. Rather, he believed in building on the strengths of their policies, as he had done in case of his economic reforms more than a decade earlier. Never denigrating the Nehruvian public sector model, he had built upon strengths to initiate, build and groom a mature public sector economy in the 1990s.
The same was true of his foreign policy in 2004. Never finding fault with Nehruvian non-alignment, Indira’s Soviet leanings, Rajiv’s muscular militarism, Rao’s look east, Gujaral’s benign brotherliness to neighbours or Vajpayee’s atom-armed engagement of West, he counted all those as basis and built hiss policies on the strength of all.
But two months into crisis —three Indian workers hired by a US company in Kuwait, were abducted by Iraqi Insurgents. His diplomats worked all ropes—diplomatic, political, commercial, religious, spooky and even sheer blackmail where required. Finally, his junior , the low profile E. Ahmed of the Muslim League, worked on his Gulf Malayali business links and organized release of three workers.
Perhaps the crisis strengthened Manmohan’s resolve never to make harsh departure in his policies, nor to burn the bridges that his predecessor had built. Despite his initial skepticism about the benefits that would accrue from the possession of atomic arms, he quietly moved to modify Vajpayee’s militaristic nuclear policy into an energy policy, without sacrificing the big power gains accrued from the possession of the bomb. Thus, his surprise nuclear deal (the only surprise that he ever delivered during his ten-year rule) created some furore, but finally, it was passed by the Parliament. The US promised to supply uranium even to Tarapur which they had refused, the Russians had always backed India in all military and technological adventures, the French were on nuclear business, and even the Uranium selling Canada and Australia got roped in. He risked his government over this, survived and returned with a larger mandate. (IPA Service)
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