Manmohan Singh’s boring governance is missed

One of my favourite quotes about politics and governance comes from the late former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose,” Cuomo often said.

Cuomo’s point was that while one might be bombastic and passionate while campaigning for election, one must always be mellow and boring while in power. A bombast in power is a recipe for disaster, Cuomo argued; governance was too rational a job for a man given to too much emotion.

Whatever you might think of him, Manmohan Singh was objectively great at being mellow, and it won him many admirers around the world.

Last October, after the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel triggered a hot-headed response from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman harked back to the example of Manmohan Singh. Calling Singh one of the world leaders he has “most admired,” Friedman reminded readers of that fateful week in late November 2008 when 10 Pakistani terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Taiba infiltrated India and massacred over 160 people in Mumbai.

“What was Singh’s military response?” Friedman asked.

“He did nothing. Singh never retaliated militarily against the nation of Pakistan or Lashkar camps in Pakistan. It was a remarkable act of restraint.”

That was a masterstroke, Friedman argued, quoting the then Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon. Like many others, Menon had urged Manmohan Singh to launch “immediate, visible retaliation” against Pakistan. It would have been politically prudent — an exercise in national catharsis that would have satisfied the masses.

Yet, in hindsight, Menon admitted that he had been wrong. If India had retaliated with a madman’s war à la Netanyahu, it would have quickly taken the spotlight away from what happened on 26/11 and turned it into a humdrum India-Pakistan quarrel. Global sympathy would have been squandered, as Netanyahu has now done. Significant economic costs would have ravaged India. The 2008 recession would have combined with war to wipe out the middle class.

People now forget that only months after 26/11, Manmohan Singh was returned to power. But Singh’s problem was that he couldn’t really campaign in poetry while he governed in prose. This was not a man for an emotional nation. He was too scientific, too academic, too rational. In an age where feelings increasingly mattered more than facts, Singh was not adept at delivering either ego-boosting triumphalism or soul-stirring propaganda. He was far too boring and unexciting.

Manmohan Singh’s political problem was compounded by the fact that he represented a bygone era of Indian democracy -- a different standard of public decency of the sort that we often found in our grandparents. Governing in an era of fractious coalition politics, Singh -- like many from his generation -- believed in inclusiveness. But inclusiveness also means that you have to deal with multiple interest groups, each bickering and stealing from the other. Things often got done slowly. When they did get done, they were often inefficient.

In the years after Manmohan Singh left power, this disenchantment with inclusive democracy was confirmed. In 2017, a Pew global survey found that 55% of Indianspreferred a “strong leader” who could make decisions without trouble from Parliament or the courts. Subsequent surveys further confirmed that sentiment.

Part of this sentiment has also been attributed to a notion that Singh’s government was corrupt. A strong leader, many argue, would have stamped out the thieves around him. Yet, this too was a result of democracy: you only know of large-scale scandals if the media is free to report them, the anti-corruption agencies free to probe those in power (and not just the opposition leaders), and democratic institutions promptly release data.

In an age of governing in poetry, Manmohan Singh’s mellow presence shall be missed.