The speech the Prime Minister never gave

How does one respond to Manmohan Singh’s speech of September 21, the first time a Prime Minister has devoted an entire address to the nation to explaining economic policy? For many, the very fact that Dr Singh spoke at all was both telling and tellingly reassuring.

In times of desperation, people long for hope, for that familiar hand on the shoulder, for a senior statesman or leader to tell them their country is still in good hands. That is why the initial reaction to Dr Singh’s speech was positive.
Yet, this was an instinctive response not so much to the content of the speech, but the idea of the speech. It ended months and months of extraordinary silence. In this period India has been buffeted by scandals and an economic slowdown. Indians have felt the impact of an economy that grew at 8.5 per cent an annum between 2003 and 2011 but saw GDP growth decline to 5.5 per cent in the April-June 2012 quarter.
That three per cent differential was an indicator of the dipping mood. Inevitably, the restlessness and the loss of hope found manifestation in other forms — whether in protests against corruption led by messianic mavericks, or the resurfacing of violent identity politics for the first time since Gujarat 2002.
Through all of this the Prime Minister kept quiet. There was no address to the people, no equivalent of a fireside chat, no avuncular reassurance, no determined commitment that things would get better. When he finally spoke, there was relief that Dr Singh had opened his mouth to do something more
than put in a morsel of chapati.
Even so, did the Prime Minister square up with his citizens? Did he tell the people all they wanted to hear and were entitled to hearing, including an explanation or at least an acknowledgment of the swindles, paralysis and fecklessness of the recent past? For all his straightforwardness and decency, Dr Singh seemed to adhere to the cynical formulation of “never apologise, never explain”.
What did the speech have and what did it lack? Dr Singh appealed to Indians to tighten their belts. He built a case for rational pricing of energy — a reference to the diesel price hike as well as the power sector restructuring expected in the coming week, and likely to lead to higher electricity tariffs. Indians need to pay the real cost of what they use and consume because “money does not grow on trees”. The crisis that India faces, he said, was reminiscent of the balance of payments catastrophe of 1991.
All this is very well, but what caused the crisis? In 1991, Dr Singh and his Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, inherited a mess. They did not create one. In 2012, after eight years at the helm, surely Dr Singh owes it to his voters to spell out how a similar mess came to be created? If “money does not grow on trees”, why were the excesses of the National Advisory Council, the lavish outlays for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and the farm loan write-offs tolerated and even encouraged? “At times, we need to say ‘No’ to the easy option and say ‘Yes’ to the more difficult one,” Dr Singh urged Indians. How often in the past eight years has he listened to his own advice?
“It is the responsibility of the government to defend the national interest,” Dr Singh said, “and protect the long-term future of our people”. As a platitude, this is unexceptionable. Nevertheless how does it sit alongside the fact that the UPA years have meant lots of talk but very little action on the building of infrastructure, the best guarantor of a society’s “long-term future?”
In the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2007-12), power capacity augmentation was 30 per cent short of target. Government power companies missed their goal by close to 50 per cent. In 2004, when the Manmohan Singh government took office, India had a robust highway development programme, one of the achievements of the NDA years. Has the UPA government taken this highway development mission to a new level, or has it allowed it to wither? Who will shoulder responsibility?
“The world is not kind to those who do not tackle their own problems,” the Prime Minister warned, “many European countries are in this position today… I am determined to see that India will not be pushed into that situation.” From an economy that had ambitions of challenging China, is India now to be glad it is not in the predicament of Greece and Portugal? Is that — the avoidance of a Europe-style collapse — the aspiration for a society with the largest working-age population in the first half of the 21st century, so much pent up demand and such potential?
There is something melancholic as well as terrifying when a person drops into anecdotage and starts talking of achievements of decades earlier. When L.K. Advani speaks of the Emergency and his imprisonment or of the Ayodhya movement even his one-time admirers feel exasperated. This is an individual’s indulgence, they realise, and divorced from today’s societal reality. How is it any different when Dr Singh harks back to the reforms of 1991? He displays his gift for memory; equally, absence of any mention of the missed promises of his prime ministry represents a facility for amnesia.
A people’s contract with those who rule them is transactional. When Churchill called for “blood, toil, tears, and sweat”, he implicitly held out hope of victory against Nazi Germany. When Dr Singh seeks sacrifices and rational pricing for public goods so as not to destroy the fiscal balance, what does he offer? Does he promise to crack down on public spending? Does he resolve to push blockbuster reforms in public procurement? Does he hold out hope of a manufacturing revolution and of buzzing factories? Does he sell a dream or delineate a broader vision?
All of those are elements of the speech India wanted Manmohan Singh to give. It was the speech India has been waiting for Manmohan Singh to give. It was the speech Manmohan Singh never gave.