The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh
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Dr Singh also saw little point in continuing the charade of negotiations by the UPA-Left committee. It was clear to him that the Left would never support the government. The choice before the government was, in his mind, obvious: ignore the Left and proceed, or agree with the Left and stay put. Explaining this to Sonia Gandhi, the PM had then told her that if the UPA chose the second option, it would have to find another prime minister to lead the coalition. Sonia requested Dr Singh to sleep on the issue. When, after meeting him the next morning, she realized he was serious, she summoned Pranab Mukherjee. That crucial meeting had been on as I had driven past RCR that morning.
Pranab Mukherjee had left RCR that morning to meet Karat and Yechury and tell them what had happened. The next morning, on 19 June, The Hindu’s lead headline was ‘Congress-Left Near Break-Up on Nuclear Deal’. It reported, among other things, that a meeting of the UPA-Left committee scheduled for the 18th evening had been postponed because of the PM’s threat to quit if he was not allowed to go ahead with the nuclear deal. Two days of hectic activity followed.
The following day, I learnt from a political reporter that Montek had gone to see Sonia. I assumed she had summoned him to get him to speak to the PM and soften him up. Just a few minutes after I had heard this, I spotted Montek in South Block and invited him into my room, and asked him what Sonia had told him. Surprised that I knew of this meeting, he immediately asked if I had heard about it from Dr Singh. That giveaway question confirmed my theory that Sonia had asked Montek to persuade Dr Singh to withdraw his resignation.
Montek admitted as much. Yes, Sonia did request him to convince the PM not to resign, he said. So what did the PM say, I asked. Not surprisingly, Montek ignored my question, but proffered the view that ‘boss could wait’ on the deal. He reasoned that Dr Singh would still be PM in 2009, after the US elections were over. He felt it would be easier for the Congress party to conclude the deal with a Democrat in the White House. I recalled Kerry’s advice and told Montek that it had to be now or never. Clearly not keen to discuss the matter, he agreed with me too and laughed in his characteristically friendly manner. ‘Tough call for boss,’ he said and walked out of my room.
I sat there worried. If Sonia had summoned Montek to get him to advise the PM to back off, surely she would deploy others too. Many around Dr Singh were wont to be even more risk averse than him. They would in all likelihood counsel him to remain in office and complete his term rather than be heroic and risk a downfall. Would Dr Singh then have the courage to stand firm and call their bluff, I wondered.
My own view that Sonia simply would not allow the PM to step down was shared by Subrahmanyam. He urged me to persuade the PM to stand firm. ‘Tell him that she cannot afford to see him go. She will have to back him, but he must be firm. Only you can tell him that,’ said Subrahmanyam, when I went to seek his guidance.
I then called on Dr Singh at 3 RCR. Both he and Mrs Kaur were seated in the living room, each reading a book. That was such a familiar sight. I had seen them this way on innumerable occasions; just the two of them, reading together in companionable silence.
When I asked him about Sonia’s message, sent through Montek, Dr Singh confirmed that she was trying to persuade him to wait and not force the pace of events. I warned him that if he did not act now, the rest of his term would be wasted. The Left would smell victory and might even press for a change of prime minister. I reminded him that the Left had a track record of doing just that. They had claimed credit for replacing the ‘pro-business’ Morarji Desai with the ‘pro-farmer’ Charan Singh in 1978; of forcing the exit of V.P. Singh and replacing him with the ‘young turk’ Chandra Shekhar in 1989; of helping ‘leftist’ I.K. Gujral replace ‘pro-Narasimha Rao’ Deve Gowda in 1997. Now they would claim credit, I warned him, for replacing ‘neo-liberal’ Manmohan Singh with ‘secular’ Arjun Singh, ‘Bengali’ Pranab—the CPI(M) was essentially a Bengal party—or ‘leftist’ Antony, who was an old ally of the comrades from Kerala.
Dr Singh laughed. ‘I am ready to go. Anyone of them can be made PM. Why not?’
I agonized over what his record in office would be, if he were to go. After all, the party was busy claiming credit for all the good work done in his time. Between Sonia and the NAC, they would say they had done everything. ‘It will be as if you did nothing,’ I told the PM. ‘If you don’t get through this one initiative that everyone identifies with you, what can you claim as your own legacy?’
Dr Singh remained quiet but Mrs Kaur nodded her head in agreement. I then used an argument that I knew would appeal to her.
‘Ma’am, he will just be another Gujral if he does not do this!’ She laughed.
‘Everyone knows Gujral was prime minister, but what did he achieve?’ I continued. ‘In fact, what did Deve Gowda achieve? What did V.P. Singh achieve? At least they have the excuse that they were in office for just about a year each. After four years, what can the PM claim he has done, when all the credit for everything, other than the deal is given to her?’
‘Haan,’ she said in agreement. He continued to remain silent.
I was not sure what Dr Singh thought of my outspokenness, but I was not too worried. I had already informed him of my plans to quit and move to Singapore for personal reasons. He knew why I had to do that. He also knew that I had no axe to grind in urging him to stand his ground.
Finding the Left adamant, and unable to let Dr Singh go, Sonia Gandhi finally took a call. The government would be allowed to go to the IAEA and complete negotiations on the safeguards agreement. She left it to Pranab Mukherjee to try and prevent the Left from withdrawing support. It remained to be seen whether he could swing that.
After all the hectic activity of the preceding days, Saturday, 21June was a quiet day. I had lunch at home and was enjoying a siesta when my mobile phone rang. A friend of the Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh was on the line.
‘Mr Baru, I have a message for you,’ he said. ‘My friend Mr Amar Singh is in a hospital in Colorado. He wants you to tell the prime minister that American doctors are very good and they are taking good care of him. He is very happy there and he says Americans are such warm and friendly people, we should have good relations with them.’
I was not aware that Amar Singh had been hospitalized. So I politely inquired after his health and said I would inform the PM. ‘It would be good if you can convey this message as soon as possible,’ he added. ‘Maybe the prime minister would want to wish Amar Singh a speedy recovery.’
Later that afternoon, I met Dr Singh and conveyed what was clearly a political signal from Amar Singh. He had hinted, through this intermediary, at the Samajwadi Party’s willingness to support Dr Singh on the nuclear deal. I felt Amar Singh might want to speak directly to the PM and suggested Dr Singh call him. He had a perfect alibi for doing so, given that he was in hospital and in poor health. The two men were not distant acquaintances. Indeed, Dr Singh and Amar Singh, both members of the Rajya Sabha, got on well even though their personalities and reputations were poles apart. In fact, Amar Singh often demonstrated great regard and affection for the PM. It was in the nature of Parliament to facilitate such peculiar, and unlikely, friendships.
Months later Amar Singh would claim credit for getting the nuclear deal done. Calling me from his hospital bed in Singapore, he asked me to come and see him. So I paid him a visit, walking in after Amitabh Bachchan, his wife,Jaya, and their family had left the room. ‘So who do you think are the architects of the nuclear deal?’ he asked me. Before I could reply, he added, ‘You will say George Bush and Manmohan Singh. Let me tell you, it was George Bush and Amar Singh.’
I have no idea what the PM did after that call from Amar Singh, but a couple of days later media reports appeared suggesting that Mulayam Singh Yadav was rethinking his opposition to the nuclear deal. Karat panicked and called on Yadav. On 25 June, a few hours before a meeting of the UPA-Left committee, Karat met Yadav at his son Akhilesh Yadav’s home in Delhi to secure his support for the Left’s
unchanged opposition to the nuclear deal. Mulayam remained noncommittal and said that he had convened a meeting of his party on 3 July where they would take a final decision. Karat met Yadav again on 1 July. After that meeting, Amar Singh, who had returned from the US by then, briefed the media and said the Samajwadi Party wanted all secular forces to remain united. ‘A division in secular forces will be harmful for the country.’
The message to the UPA was reinforced. The Samajwadi Party was willing to part ways with the Left and support the Congress on the nuclear deal in the name of the ‘unity of all secular forces’. The next day, on 2 July, Narayanan called on Yadav and Amar Singh and briefed them on the nuclear deal. On 3 July, the United National Progressive Alliance, an outfit headed byYadav, met to take a final view and resolved to consult ‘experts and scientists’ before taking a decision. Yadav and Amar Singh went straight from this meeting to call on former President Abdul Kalam. Kalam promptly issued a statement in support of the nuclear deal and urged Yadav to support the government. Not only was Kalam a distinguished technocrat, a Bharat Ratna and a former Rashtrapati, he was also a Muslim. His support for the nuclear deal with the US was exactly the kind of political backing Mulayam needed to justify the switch to his own cadres. It was all preplanned and worked like clockwork.
That afternoon Narayanan met Amar Singh and Samajwadi Party MP Ramgopal Yadav, also someone who enjoyed good personal relations with Dr Singh, at an undisclosed location to avoid the media. The venue, many believed, was an IB safe house in Lutyens’ Delhi. After their meeting, Narayanan handed me an elaborate statement to be issued to the media that contained several re-statements of government policy aimed at satisfying the Samajwadi Party. Mulayam and Amar Singh wanted the PMO to give public assurances that in going ahead with the nuclear deal, India would neither compromise its independent foreign policy and strategic autonomy nor disrupt its relations with Iran, and so on. The party wanted these assurances primarily because of its large Muslim support base.
Narayanan’s activism on this front may well have been shaped by his desire, triggered by Dr Singh’s poser, ‘Who knows what you have done all your life as an intelligence officer?’, to enter the history books. Equally, he may have been expected to deliver on his usual boast to one and all that he had ‘a file’ on them. Narayanan may well have had many on his interlocutors in this set of negotiations, and this time he would be making use of them in the best interest of the country and not just his government and its political masters.
On 8 July, Dr Singh flew to Japan to participate in the G-8 Outreach meeting. I stayed at home to wind up my affairs since I had already submitted my resignation and was scheduled to leave for Singapore by the end of July. On board his aircraft, Dr Singh met the accompanying media and told them that the government had decided to go to the IAEA to conclude the safeguards agreement ‘very soon’. Many in Delhi were surprised. I called Jaideep Sarkar who was with Dr Singh. ‘Yes, he has done it,’ said Jaideep. In mid-flight, after leaving Delhi and with no one to stop him, Dr Singh took the final plunge.
With Mulayam and his twenty-nine MPs on his side, Dr Singh was confident that he would have the numbers in Parliament in case a vote of confidence had to be secured. A nervous Congress party did not know what to say. Journalists trying to get a reaction from the party found no one willing to comment.
The next day, on 9 July, the Left Front predictably announced the withdrawal of its support to the UPA government. Pranab Mukherjee then jumped the gun by issuing a statement to say that the government would seek a vote of confidence in Parliament and only then go to the IAEA. He was unaware of what was going on in Dr Singh’s mind. Far away, in distant Sapporo in Japan, the PM was finally acting on his own. A day after Mukherjee’s pledge that the government would not approach the IAEA until it had won the trust vote in Parliament, the government in fact chose to approach the IAEA, rubbishing Mukherjee’s assurance.
Returning home on 10 July, Dr Singh informed President Pratibha Patil that he would seek a vote of confidence later that month. The media was full of reports and analyses, and statements from the BJP and the Left, both of whom had made common cause in their opposition to the deal. The Congress party was clearly confused and went silent. Dr Singh agreed to meet a few senior editors from the electronic media because TV was not only playing a larger role in influencing public opinion, but most news channels were broadly supportive of the PM. The print media was still dominated by an older generation of journalists who were either sceptical about relations with the US or had explicit pro-BJP or pro-Left sympathies. Television journalists, on the other hand, were younger, more open-minded and less politically biased. In fact, almost every TV channel was willing to be supportive of the PM with very little effort on my part.
With the date set for the vote of confidence, Dr Singh got down to gathering support. He spoke to all UPA leaders and met as many MPs as necessary. He asked for a list of MPs who had spoken in his support on various occasions and made sure that he called each one of them. The debate in Parliament was exhaustive and had several moments of great oratory, and well-informed and reasoned discourse as well as moments of high emotion, showmanship and drama. The argument that a strategic understanding with the United States would not go down well with India’s Muslim community was rubbished by several Muslim MPs from across parties, including Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Omar Abdullah of the National Conference and Mehbooba Mufti of the People’s Democratic Party, all of whom spoke eloquently in Dr Singh’s support. Whatever the outcome of the vote, whoever heard the debate was now well informed on the facts and the fears.
Returning home late on the first day of the debate, 21 July, I switched on the TV and tried to relax. One of the channels was playing a song from a yet-to-be-released film called Singh is Kinng. The song had great rhythm and beat. It was the kind of song that made you shake your shoulders and hips. As I went to bed I amused myself by imagining TV news channels playing this song the next day were Dr Singh to indeed win the vote of confidence.
Tuesday, 22 July was a tense day. Congress party leaders and Narayanan met the PM to assure him that the government had the numbers. Dr Singh looked pleased and confident, though a bit nervous. Everything seemed to be going well until after lunch. But trouble was lying in wait. At 4 p.m., some members of the BJP placed wads of rupee notes on the table of the Lok Sabha secretary general and alleged that they had been paid this money in exchange for support to the government. Senior BJP leaders then informed the media that a sting operation had also been conducted by a TV channel and proof of the bribing would be shown on TV I was in South Block at the time and rushed to Parliament. Dr Singh was closeted with Sonia Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee and other senior party leaders. Prithviraj Chavan came out of the room and called Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN, the TV channel that had filmed the alleged sting, and warned him of legal consequences if the channel televised the visuals.
When Sonia Gandhi and other leaders left the PM’s room, I walked in. Dr Singh was ashen-faced; he looked pale and ill, almost as if he would collapse or break down crying. I had never seen him like this— silent, motionless, shell-shocked and grief-stricken. This was not the way he had imagined the day would end. This was not the way, either, that he had imagined the issue would play out. This was his most important political initiative, for which he had fought a hard political battle for three long years. He was on the cusp of victory. Despite the betrayal of the Left, he had managed to stitch together a coalition of the willing. He had never imagined that in the end his heroic enterprise would be so sullied by scandal.
Watching him in silence, I could read his mind. Only the previous evening, on the 21st, he had firmly denied allegations that he was securing support for his government by paying bribes. He had bravely asked the Opposition to produce evidence, confident that there would be no such evidence. Advani was on TV reminding the PM of this challenge. ‘Yesterday he asked for evidence. Today we have brought it.’
Was this the initiative of an overenthusiastic wheeler-dealer in the party or a conspiracy to sully the PM’s image and reputation? Was it the work of those angry with Dr Singh for forcing a split with the Left and a near collapse of the government? Were there elements that hoped he would resign and quit, opening up the possibility of a change of leadership and a return to business as usual with the Left? A variety of conspiracy theories swirled around in my mind as I sat in front of a man who looked defeated only hours before a victory.