Manmohan Singh Uvach: Understanding the pleasure and pain of the former PM
When a person who inherently likes to speak less, but than, he not only speaks but makes a fervish and passionate statement in the parliament that make heads turns, more so if the person happens to be the former Prime Minister of the country and also economist of repute. It also looks like the PM was having both the pleasure and pain after the demonetisation move. Manmohan Singh is like the Bhishma of Mahabharata, right person on the wrong side. Second tied to protect the throne no matter what. And therefore it didn’t come as a surprise for the choice of words that he used to lambast the government on the demonetisation move (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/demonetisation-debate-manmohan-singh-gdp-cut-narendra-modi-target-4393979/).
We will analyse the statements of the former PM with his dual standing and personality. First Manmohan Singh cannot escape his shares of guilt, scams and crimes that happened under him as the PM. Whether he kept quite willingly, purposely , diplomatically, greedily, selfishly, conscientiously (?), ethically or whatever reasons that can describe his enigmatic silence when ROME was burning here in India, cannot be pardoned which ever set of eye lens one uses. Therefore the former PM must understand that he does not represent the same integrity and honesty for which he was known to be.
Now let us come to the second part. Despite of being a perfect HMV (” His masters voice ” ) he is still an economist. And its here that we cannot afford to ignore the economist side of Manmohan Singh.
The government must therefore try to filter the speech appropriately and remove the trash from the valuables. Words like Organised loot and legalised plunder are certainly the trash side of speech or to appease the masters. Similarly when he quoted Keynes, “In the long run all of us are dead’.”is also political Manmohan and not the economist Manmohan.
But when he says the GDP can dip by 2 % , it needs to be taken seriously. For no economists worth his name can afford to provide wrong figures in his name.
When he says, “After all, 90 per cent of our people work in the informal sector, 55 per cent of our workers in agriculture are reeling in distress. The cooperative banking system, which serves large number of people in the rural areas, is non-functional and has been prevented from handling cash…”, we believe its factually correct.
He is partially correct when he says, “The worst hit will be the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) segment, that accounts for roughly 40-45 per cent of manufacturing, and 40 per cent of exports.”. For not all MSME can be bracketed under distress.
We would therefore like the government to reply to the former Prime Minister politically and rhetorically in the parliament but also take his word on the economy seriously.
The government must form a committee under NITI Aayoga where representatives from industry ( large , small , MSME) , businesses, banks, and other places can come and discuss the impact and suggest solutions. This must happen at the earliest.
It will be foolish to ignore what the former PM said. The government must leave the pleasure of speaking to the PM but must try to understand his pain from the same.
