A few years ago, India’s emergence as a tiger economy was taken for granted. Not so today as its double-digit growth seems highly improbable, with the country turning into a slumbering elephant. What has gone wrong? Will Manmohan Singh be able to salvage his reputation as an ‘economist’ Prime Minister?

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. — Christopher Hitchens

Staring down the barrel at a 6.9 per cent GDP growth annual forecast for the fiscal in February 2012, down from an erstwhile 9 per cent, does not look like the handiwork of a cracker-jack economist-in-chief. Nor does it look like the report card of a reputedly reformist two consecutive terms in office Prime Minister.

Manmohan Singh’s turn at the top has been sadly undistinguished, weak, ineffectual, feeble and helplessly time-serving. This is not surprising, given his Faustian pact to “run” the Government without being, in electoral, organisational or power-broking terms, either the one who can bring in the votes or the money.

Singh, on his part, seems content with the form of being in-charge while being divested of most of the substance. But, of course, now he is having trouble staying above the fray too, as he is catching a good deal of the opprobrium from the most corrupt Government of India since August 15, 1947.

Singh’s longish tenure in office is marked, at best, by personal honesty, though not blamelessness. Because like Dhritarashtra, the blind but covetous king from the Mahabharata, his enigmatic silences, and hurt, stage-managed though plausible denials, don’t quite wash.

He does come across as the whipping boy for others’ sins, but we are well aware he signed up for it, and is taking his knocks willingly enough. But presiding over a hugely corrupt Government, in drift, has quite eclipsed expectations of vision, clarity and a continuation of the new India Singh is credited with launching in 1991.

Singh, a highly intelligent Oxford-educated economist, has swallowed pride and ignominy through two consecutive terms of underachievement and belied hopes, and still has not lost his appetite for the remainder. But his track record is certainly not a good advertisement for “Manmohanomics”, whatever the silly coinage actually means. Because this box, supposedly containing wondrous gifts and boons for the Indian economy, seems to be empty, even of the expected jack-in-the-box on a spring and blowing a raspberry. And it is not empty because someone stole the contents either.

But are we, in effect, criticising the mild-mannered erstwhile professor, flip-flopping between socialism and the free market as the occasion demands, for our own flawed perceptions? Has Prime Minister Singh been wrongly invested with the mantle that properly belongs to his deliberately eclipsed predecessor in the job? Is the true author of Manmohanomics the Chanakya-like Telugu bidda PV Narasimha Rao, who pushed it all through while running a minority Government in just five years?

Was Singh ever really the great liberaliser of 1991 in his own right, or the mere front man for the ever poker-faced Rao? Could he have been flying independent kites as Finance Minister then, given his evident timidity of temperament and penchant for expedient survival?

Or, were both Rao and Singh taking instruction from abroad? Was Singh actually brought in from the World Bank to carry out America’s bidding at the point of our national near bankruptcy?

Or, was Singh a closet socialist even then, merely doing his job at the behest of the Prime Minister, or the World Bank, but without conviction? After all, even now, our Government representatives never fail to say market-friendly things at Davos, Washington, London, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and Singapore, projecting India as a worthwhile investment destination. And this, while being extremely obstructionist back home, obsessed with voter-friendliness and massive welfare programmes to the exclusion of most other elements of governance, let alone development.

The UPA I and II have so far seemed oblivious of foreign complaints of red tape and bureaucracy at every step and how difficult it is to do business in India. This has apparently not changed appreciably from the protectionist/socialist Indira Gandhi era. But this fact does not seem to bother anyone important in the Government. The pertinent question is why, and particularly with the same man in charge who allegedly changed things irrevocably in 1991.

Perhaps the Government of India under the UPA doesn’t want double-digit growth after all, and has the collective psyche of the poor man who grows richer but is embarrassed by it. Besides, there are plenty, some would argue far too many, Leftist commentators, who talk endlessly of inclusive growth, the gap between the rich and the poor, how GDP growth is not enough, how “India Shining” is a joke, etc.

A retrograde, nostalgic, robotic, loss-making HMT style watch and ward step, worn inwards to the wrist, and backwards in one’s soul, holds powerful appeal in a century-plus-old Congress built on socialism. The poor are the purpose of the Congress chief, plus the mysteriously not yet quite mature heir apparent, with his aam admi shibboleth, and the absurdly powerful and unaccountable cabal called the National Advisory Council.

There is nothing wrong with this emphasis on the poor in itself, but it becomes very difficult for any reformer if the spending on the poor is divorced from the income side of the balance sheet. Perhaps, it is this cavalier attitude that may have put paid to Manmohanomics the day he first became Prime Minister, let alone now, when the whole ball of twine — governance, corruption, terrorism, communalism, indiscipline, revolt in the coalition and so on — is beginning to unravel.

Or, was it Rao all along, erudite in several languages, highly urbane, minister of everything for 30 years in precedent to the top job, who was the actual architect of the courageous decisions and the bold departure from our pathetically underperforming past?

And didn’t P Chidambaram, in a happier incarnation as Finance Minister, sitting in the cavernous Raj era room in North Block he has occupied thrice so far, not also do his bit with his landmark “Dream Budget” of 1997?

Besides, some of the recent past in economic terms, that period when we were cranking out 9 per cent, was part of the time and tide of momentum caused by the global steeple chase between 2003 and 2008. Our stock and property markets also boomed between 2003 and 2008, but the pity is we were able to absorb barely a couple of percentage points of global investment capital because, in the end, our market and economy are too small in absolute terms at about $1 trillion each.

The growth statistics of the UPA I, with its tantalising promise of breaching the double-digit barrier, has been achieved only in Opposition-ruled Gujarat so far, at 12 per cent per annum recently, under the stewardship of much-derided Narendra Modi.

And yes, Manmohan Singh did get the civil nuclear power deal through during the UPA I, though it remains sadly unimplemented on the ground to date. Why he did it, with a certain verve never before displayed, seems a bit of a puzzle. Perhaps it is because it was one initiative he could call his own, along with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W Bush, the latter starved of foreign policy successes too.

The UPA II, by way of contrast, has been hit by the converse blight of international economic collapse, flight of FII capital from India, and ham-fisted local efforts at inflation control that nearly garrotted the economy altogether. It has also seen the antics of rebellious minor partners get in the way. It is as if the Left from the UPA I has been replaced by others with the same thinking but another name.

In the midst of this difficult global scenario, there has been an expansion of the ‘welfare’ agenda such as the looming Food Security Bill which will need lakhs of crores to fund, in addition to the ongoing NREGS, the NREGA, the subsidies on diesel, cooking gas, fertilizer and so on. Ironically, though some people have grown rich off such programmes, the poor, not surprisingly, have stayed “deserving” as ever.

 Do the Leftists who back these initiatives to the hilt have any answer for the leakages and corruption that rules such ‘welfare’ programming? The answer is a resounding no. The nation’s present and future income is being handled with such utter profligacy, leading to a runaway debt situation.

Socialism has after all been unable, even in its ‘welfarism’ avatar, in small, under-populated and rich countries like Norway and Kuwait to square its circle. So, there is no point on dwelling on its inequities, including the tens of millions of people killed in its name in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Never has there been a lie so frequently repeated, nor one as seductive to the young and naïve, old and venal alike.

But a country such as ours, in bold, zealous and relentlessly reformist mode, could literally catapult itself into prominence, even as the statist and Communist-in-name China has demonstrated.

On the ground, however, the matter of our progress has always been tangled up in the swamp of our political will and perhaps the recalcitrance of our karma. It is as if the politicians will render themselves redundant if there is all round prosperity. So, in a keep them barefoot and pregnant kind of cynical ploy, the powers that be may want the masses to stay fecund, poverty-stricken and dependent.

We have, of course, disappointed all those who were rooting for a resurgent BRIC of a country. But maybe the cheerleaders still have some relevance. What is evident is that the Manmohanomics of the 1990s, whether of the man’s own write or not, is alive and well and has indeed changed India forever.

The current and longstanding malaise is to do with the blockages and stoppages that we see in every aspect of governance today. But this also implies that one day, who knows it could be soon, we will be unshackled from our dungeons afresh and let out into the sunlight, free to move away and ahead once more.

When we do so, as inevitably we must because there is no congenital defect to prevent or thwart such outcome, we will meet that very destiny unveiled with the first deft moves after near bankruptcy in 1991.

The same man was manning the financial levers of the country then, and so he must be more than aware of what needs to be done now. The only problem is, does he have the power, the intention, or the will to get it going in the remaining two years of his current term? Otherwise, one can safely send Manmohanomics, such as it is, to the history books, and talk of it as a brilliant beginning and foundation that may have to be built upon by someone else in future.