NEW DELHI: He has been in power for nearly 100 days but Indians are complaining they don't see enough of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since coming to the job in May, the 71-year-old technocrat-turned-politician has been putting in 14-hour days
, devouring files and coming to grips with the complexities of running a hugely diverse country of one billion people.
In the process, he has become the most low-profile premier the world's largest democracy has ever had, in contrast to predecessors who clearly enjoyed the limelight, commentators say.
"He should reach out to the people and use the respect we all have for him for the good of the country," Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi said. But it might be not easy for the gentlemanly Oxford-educated economist, famed for launching India on the road to liberalisation, to occupy a bigger space on the political stage.
It's also not clear he wants to - unlike previous premiers, he has ordered no photos of him be used in government ads. Singh was sworn in May 22 after being handpicked by Italian-born Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi.
She was due to become premier after leading the party to an upset win but backed down at the 11th hour, partly over fears her "foreign origins" would be a weapon for opposition parties.
Gandhi then nominated family loyalist Singh for the job but she stayed president of the party and leads it in parliament, both jobs traditionally held by the premier. As a result, most Indians perceive Gandhi, widow of slain premier Rajiv Gandhi and torchbearer of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to be overwhelmingly more influential than Singh.
In a poll by news magazine India Today, 54 per cent of respondents said Gandhi was India's most powerful person while 25 per cent chose Singh. Still, the "mandarin and the madonna," as they have been dubbed, seem happy with the unusual power-sharing arrangement as well as voters.
The India Today poll found 34 per cent felt Congress was best suited to lead a coalition government while 28 per cent chose the former ruling Hindu nationalists.
While Gandhi keeps fractious parliamentary allies on board, Singh gets on with the business of government. In a speech this month, he said he had "no promises to make, just promises to keep."
Government bureaucrats say Gandhi takes care to keep her distance from the levers of government power and defers to Singh. "They talk when they need to and have a meeting of minds on almost all subjects. She respects his judgment," a senior government official said. "He's the head of government."
And while his national profile may not be high, Singh, who enjoys a squeaky clean reputation in India's murky political world, is imposing his stamp on the government, stressing good governance in a nation where corruption is rife.
He runs a "no frills" administration and has told ministers to eschew all but essential foreign travel. He has spurned the Mercedes ordered for his predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, preferring to fold his thin frame into an Indian-made Ambassador, the workhorse based on the 1950s Morris Oxford.
And unlike many previous prime ministers, he "wants the detail" when making a decision. Any minister presenting a proposal "finds himself being questioned extremely closely," a senior bureaucrat said.
"He works from 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 to 11:00 at night with breaks for meals. Somehow his staff manages to ensure he takes off between lunch and teatime Sundays," he said.
Singh also likes a spartan lifestyle for himself. His attire consists of crisp homespun white kurta-pyjamas and trademark skyblue turban while lunch and dinner are two rotis - a flat Indian bread - and lentils.
Yet for all Singh's hard work, analysts say the government, elected on a ticket of spreading benefits of rapid growth to the millions of rural and urban poor, still appears to be finding its way.
Starvation deaths continue to make headlines, there has been no headway in India-Pakistan peace talks, there have been messy confrontations with two state governments and industrial unrest is building.
"The impression persists he's not really his own man or is having to function in a set-up in which the lines of command ... aren't clear," analyst Inder Malhotra said.
In the 1990s as finance minister, Singh earned the sobriquet of "economic liberator" for opening up the inward-looking economy to the world. It's unclear if as premier he can leave a similar stamp on 21st-century India. Still, wrote India Today editor Aroon Poorie, "if Manmohan has promises to keep, the nation seems to be in a mood to give him time." -AFP
