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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
A caretaker for the Gandhi family?
Manmohan Singh may be a proxy for Sonia Gandhi, writes Coomi Kapoor, but he's growing in stature by the day:
Indeed, I fancy that by the time Manmohan is done, he might well be remembered as a seminal prime minister. And the Gandhis to come may have a tough time matching up.
At the start of his tenure as prime minister, several of Singh’s senior cabinet colleagues had assumed that he would be simply the first among equals who would stick to handling the subject he knew best, that is the economy, while they would be free to run their ministries as they saw fit. But Singh has grown into the prime minister’s job and has not always restricted himself to this convenient division of labour. When the need has arisen, he has intervened effectively to assert his will on his ministerial colleagues. In fact, his biggest triumph so far has not been on the economic front but in foreign affairs, where the PMO has overshadowed the Ministry of External Affairs in dealing with both China and Pakistan. The start of the Muzzafarabad-Srinagar bus was a personal triumph for the PM, as was the willingness of Pakistan to discuss the possibility of a soft border in Kashmir.
Indeed, I fancy that by the time Manmohan is done, he might well be remembered as a seminal prime minister. And the Gandhis to come may have a tough time matching up.
