NEW DELHI: Manmohan Singh had barely opened the first file as India's prime minister when the carping started - he was a puppet, the real power was with Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and she would wield it ceaselessly.
Singh, the father of India's economic reforms, an Oxford-educated economist and a former central bank chief, took over as India's 13th prime minister on Saturday after Ms Gandhi decided she did not want the job and named him instead.
"Sonia will be the absolute power behind the throne," said columnist and former diplomat Kuldip Nayar. "She has put all her loyalists in top ministerial posts. Manmohan Singh will be beholden to Sonia and will be a shadow prime minister."
Italian-born Gandhi said she was listening to an "inner voice", but many saw her decision to shun the prime minister's office as acknowledgement that her foreign birth would be fodder for the Hindu nationalists she ousted in this month's election.
Mr Singh was a close confidante, a good administrator and of impeccable integrity, so she did not have to look far for an alternative. "The great liability he inherits is that this alliance was born out of compulsion rather than an allotment of shared space," wrote editor and former Congress lawmaker M.J. Akbar in The Asian Age newspaper. "Nothing was discussed, and much was assumed.
"Manmohan Singh is in office but Sonia Gandhi is in power," he added. That sentiment was underlined when the council of ministers sworn in along with Singh on Saturday contained around a dozen people identified closely with Ms Gandhi, who is Congress party president and its parliamentary leader.
Congress has 42 of the 67 seats in the coalition ministerial council. "That is a load of bunkum," said political commentator Prem Shankar Jha when asked if real power lay with Gandhi.
"The farthest this can go is effectively in determining policy, the broad thrust of policy," he said. "The Congress president can bring a number of issues to the prime minister - that is the kind of thing a party president can and will be doing and I think should be doing. "But decisions are taken in cabinet. Ms Gandhi cannot make the cabinet take a decision that Manmohan Singh does not want." The problem here really is the legacy. Ms Gandhi is the torch-bearer of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty and three members of that family have been prime ministers.
The family is revered by many Indians and enjoys virtual cult status. But critics note that founder prime minister Jawaharal Nehru, his daughter Indira and her son Rajiv have all, to one degree or another, been uneasy about sharing the limelight.
But perhaps Sonia Gandhi, who is Rajiv's widow, is made of different stuff. She has turned to Mr Singh because they have a good relationship and because his talents are complementary to hers, some analysts say. His managerial abilities and clean image have made him a darling of India's growing and politically aware middle class.
This is the section of society which feels most disturbed by Ms Gandhi's foreign origin. In contrast, she is adored by the country's rural masses, for whom Mr Singh is a somewhat distant figure.
"They are going to work well together because it is in the interest of the country," said Jha. "Both are capable of subordinating, they have shown that they can subordinate their egos in the larger interest of the country."
Mr Singh himself has made his position very clear. "We will need Sonia-ji's guidance," he said last week. -Reuters
