For the first time in six years, after Dr Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister, we have begun to hear sharp criticism of his priorities for reform and even his style of functioning, and it’s not just coming from sections of the media but also from within the Congress Party. There have been embarrassing reports in certain sections of the media, both in India and abroad, that Dr Singh was seriously considering retirement before the end of his second term. For far too long he was reluctant to defend his role as Prime Minister through the press, but when he chose to break his silence on this issue, at a meeting he had with some senior editors on September 6, 2010, he expressed certain views on the role of the Prime Minister which are quite at variance with the evolution of the parliamentary system into a veritable prime ministerial system in several countries. Let us examine some of the views expressed by Dr Singh on September 6.
One persistent criticism against Dr Singh’s style of functioning over the last two years has been that he is not in full control of the steering wheel of government and that he has been forced to adopt a low profile as he is not the real power centre in the government or in the party. The trend in every country which had adopted the parliamentary system of democracy has been for the Prime Minister to function practically as the head of a presidential system of government. This is not a new trend in Western democracies; it started very visibly during the World War II when Britain had as its Prime Minister a dominating personality like Winston Churchill. The power wielded by Prime Minister Churchill during the war years in the parliamentary system of government was so great that the US administrator-cum-statesman Harry Hopkins said that the provisions of the British Constitution and powers of the War Cabinet were just whatever Churchill wanted them to be at any given moment!
It was not merely the exigencies of the war or the dominating personality of Churchill which triggered the process of transformation of the Prime Minister from one among equals in the Cabinet to become the captain of the Cabinet. Subsequent developments like the active involvement of Prime Ministers in the conduct of foreign affairs and the growing importance of summit meetings served to further enhance the power and influence of the Prime Minister. Ivor Jennings, one of the most reputed authorities on democratic systems of government, has gone to the extent of saying that “given a solid party backing and confidence among party leaders, a British Prime Minister wields an authority that a Roman emperor might envy or a modern dictator strives in vein to emulate”.
In the circumstances in which Dr Singh became Prime Minister, it was obvious that he could not claim “full party backing” or “confidence of party leaders”. And now that he has spoken on what he considers to be the ideal relationship between the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the government and the party, Dr Singh does not seem to be unhappy with the rather limited role he is playing in India’s parliamentary system.
Dr Singh referred to the type of relationship which India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had with some of his colleagues in the party. Dr Singh seems to believe that concentration of power in the office of the Prime Minister is not compatible with the spirit of a true democracy and this seems to have made him adopt a very tolerant attitude towards internal dissensions being aired openly, sometimes by senior members of the party.
Dr Singh claims that there has been a much greater degree of cohesion between the different strata of leadership under his stewardship compared with the period when Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister. With due respect to Dr Singh’s knowledge and experience, one is constrained to point out that there cannot be any comparison between the manner in which Nehru functioned in relation to his senior colleagues like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel or Maulana Azad and the way Dr Singh is functioning. Sardar Patel had a statute in the party and the nation which no leader other than Nehru in the history of the Congress Party had; in fact, his hold on the party organisation was much stronger than Nehru’s, but Patel willingly accepted Gandhiji’s decision to make Nehru the leader of the party in Parliament.
Further, it is well known that Krishna Menon would have been included in Nehru’s first Cabinet if the choice was left entirely to Nehru. Maulana Azad, who was one of the front leaders of the Independence Movement, had strongly opposed the inclusion of Krishna Menon in the Cabinet till all corruption allegations against him (in the purchase of jeeps in London for the government) were probed and he was cleared. Azad had threatened to resign from the Cabinet if Nehru insisted on making Krishna Menon a Cabinet minister and Nehru was not prepared to deal with such a situation.
People like Nehru, Patel and Azad cannot be compared with the leaders of today. They were together engaged in building a new nation brick by brick and were not bothered about the vicissitudes of the relationship between the Prime Minister and themselves. That is how the foundations of a genuine democracy were laid within a very short period after India became independent.
Dr Singh has rejected the suggestion of a disconnect between the government and the Congress and claimed that he would not ask every Cabinet colleague to “shut up”. He has said that he sees nothing wrong in the expression of different points of view by his ministers and senior party colleagues; but the question here is of creating the impression among the rank and file of the party that there are strong differences at the top levels on some important policy matters that the government wants to introduce. Once consensus is reached at the top levels of the party and the government, it is expected that all others fall in line and do not continue to be critics of the government.
Dr Singh is quite right in saying that he does not want to shut the mouths of senior members of his party or the government, but there should be some discipline, particularly among senior members, about the timeliness and manner of expressing differences of opinion. Democracy without discipline can lead to confusion and near anarchy and therefore it will be quite necessary for the Prime Minister to enforce discipline among all members of the government, irrespective of their rank and standing, if the object of good governance is to be achieved.

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra