Dr Manmohan Singh is a spectacular individual, his career a sort of a parody of the lives of great people. We like to read about great people who achieved something through hard work, determination, courage and grit. Often against difficult odds. We like to talk to kids about these great lives and inspire them. Dr Manmohan Singh, on the other hand, reminds us of the ironies of life, that these qualities are not necessary for success. Sometimes, by hanging around the right people and doing whatever is convenient at the personal level, you can come out a big winner in life. Recently, Dr. Manmohan Singh had this simple comeback to Nirmala Sitharaman pointing out the financial disaster that the UPA government created in Public Sector Banks.
“What happened did happen,” he says. Which literally means, “hua to hua” as Sam Pitroda would likely have put it. The Congress Party’s stock response to everything : scams, bad loan disaster and riots during their tenure.
Yes, Modi sarkar is now in its sixth year. And common people can, should and are demanding answers from the incumbent government on what it has done and how quickly to clean up the mess left by UPA. Whether the solutions brought by Modi sarkar were good or bad for the country. We can’t change the past. We can only work on the future.
As citizens of India, asking those questions from Prime Minister Modi and/or Nirmala Sitharaman is our right and privilege. Perhaps even our duty, but when Dr Manmohan Singh says forget what happened in his time, it sounds like he is mocking the people of India. It’s like he is telling us how little he ever cared about us. He does not even have the luxury of passing the buck to an earlier generation of Congress leaders. Whatever did happen was happening literally under his watch.
The festering bad loan crisis is a gift to India from the UPA years: even Raghuram Rajan in his rare moments of frankness, had no option but to acknowledge this cold hard fact.
Good that Rajan was careful to mention that the blame lies with the public sector banks, not Dr Manmohan Singh who sat in the PM’s chair and certainly not the divinely appointed National Advisory Council. Now perhaps the top management of those public sector banks can blame the junior management. In turn, they can blame the managers of individual branches, then the bank tellers sitting behind the glass windows and finally the humble folk who run around bearing messages from cabin to cabin. Let it be their fault.
In response to Nirmala Sitharaman, to rub it in, Dr Manmohan Singh even adds that the new government should learn from the UPA’s mistakes!
This is hilarious! Congress has run this country for almost 60 years. Starting in 1972, Dr. Singh has held almost every powerful position imaginable : Chief Economic Adviser, RBI Director, RBI Governor, Finance Secretary, Deputy Chair of Planning Commission, RBI Governor, Finance Minister and finally Prime Minister! During this career, India lost 20 years outright to Nehruvian socialism, collapsed in a heap in 1991, suffered record breaking scams and finally was left squirming under a mountain of bad loans! Now as he walks away, he shrugs it all off. Learn from our mistakes, he says.
Didn’t I tell you it sounds like he is laughing at us? So what if India was hit by every possible kind of economic misfortune during his years in the Congress’ establishment? Look what it did for Dr. Singh’s CV. He has that CV which glows in the dark. What do you have?
If you want to understand just how non-serious Dr. Singh was yesterday, you can just look at the rest of his remarks.
What?
I told you he is mocking us. In fact, he is just randomly saying stuff now to get a rise out of people. Like a troll.
Of course, Congress did not vote for removing Article 370.
They even tore up copies of the resolution to show just how much they were in favor of Article 370.
And in the Lok Sabha, the Congress questioned if Kashmir is even an internal matter of India! Remember?
Dr Manmohan Singh knows this just as well as you or I do. But he doesn’t need to be serious any more. He is just having fun. He has been a big winner in his life. He doesn’t care about ours. When it comes to the rest of us, whatever happens, will happen. Hua to hua.
