NEW DELHI: It’s been a harsh summer for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who heads the Congress Party-led coalition government. He has faced stalled economic reforms, televised police beatings of factory workers, embarrassment over Congress’s handling of religious riots 21 years ago and public fury at a slow government response to floods in the west.
But things could get worse for Singh as he struggles to reform Asia’s third-largest economy while catering to political pressures faced by the Congress Party, headed by the powerful Sonia Gandhi, who hand-picked him for the premier’s post.
Rumours of differences of opinion between Singh and Gandhi have been doing the rounds in New Delhi for months. Last week, the well-regarded Economic Times daily reported that Singh wanted to quit, upset by both a lack of support within his party and relentless opposition to reform from the government’s left-wing allies.
The Congress denies Singh wants to quit but admits to “healthy” differences within the party over economic policies.
“The Congress is all about different thought processes. It has people right of centre and left of centre,” Tom Vadakkan, a party spokesman, told Reuters.
Most Congress leaders see Gandhi as leading government policy rather than Singh — an Oxford University-educated economist and former finance minister with no political base.
Singh became the head of the government after Italian-born Sonia, the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, declined the post to take the wind out of an opposition campaign against a foreign-born person heading the country.
The Congress and its allies had come to power in a shock election win in May 2004 over the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a victory based on the support of millions of poor who felt left out after 14 years of reforms.
Politicians and analysts say the presence of two centres of power within the Congress — Gandhi and Singh — undermines economic policy.
“The Congress party is confused particularly in economic decision-making,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a television and newspaper commentator on politics.
“The Congress is not used to divided authority. This division of power will paralyse decision-making.”
An example of the confusion is a move by the ruling coalition to ensure 100 days of employment a year to every rural household, economists say.
The $6 billion proposal, strongly backed by Gandhi, could sharply increase a chronic fiscal deficit and push up interest rates, undermining Singh’s attempt to bring about fiscal discipline.—Reuters
