Polls, damned opinion polls and suckers. How silly can we get? Come to think of it, a country of 1.2 billion people; 670 million voters. And 800 people sitting on judgement over one year of Manmohan Singh government. I asked the pan wallah right in front of office, how does it feel. “Ki farak painda,” he said. So, I picked up the phone and called the bossman about town. Now, opinion polls are meant to be anonymous. So, I won’t reveal his name. “Hmmmm...” came his reply. I turned to every aira-gaira-natthu-khaira I knew with a sheaf of paper and, at the end of it, didn’t grow any wiser. So, we got this opinion poll done. And paid a hefty sum for what’s turned out to be an unabashed confirmation of the pan wallah’s earthy wisdom: Ki farak painda?
Sure, Manmohan Singh is a good person. But that’s not because he’s our politician of choice. He’s good because, in the eyes of the common man, he is everything that’s not detestable about our politician of choice. In many ways, Manmohan Singh is what we all aspire to be, but seldom end up being because of our social, cultural and economic compulsions. He’s educated, he’s polite, he’s articulate, he’s honest. And he’s the best stand-in person in this coalition of contradictions that makes for the UPA government.
If you look at this poll carefully, Manmohan or no Manmohan, there’s little difference of opinion about who really runs the show in New Delhi. Fact is, we didn’t have to commission a poll to figure that out. It’s not the Left. And it’s certainly not the Lalus and Paswans who make for a pack of jokers. It’s the lady who stooped to conquer because a significant body opinion was contemptuous of her foreign hand. It’s another opinion that in the process, she’s emerged the queen of hearts.Us suckers!
If you look at it in the right perspective, Manmohan Singh stands apart from the rest of us because he’s transcended our perfectly legitimate middle-class aspirations of wealth and power. Yet, in the process, he has become that powerful equation that holds wealth and power together. He is the ‘equal-to’ sign that defines the equation. That’s what makes him special. That’s also what makes him candidate of consensus among power brokers and power grabbers alike. His is the trait of a man who has mastered the art of being there, yet not quite being there. He is the quintessential Invisible Man. Which is what makes this UPA rag-tag the Manmohan Singh government and yet, not quite the Manmohan Singh government. And it makes no difference.
Which is what the results of this opinion poll are about. Which is, if you look at it carefully, what the past four governments have actually been about, right since the reign of P V Narasimha Rao through Deve Gowda, Inder Gujral and A B Vajpayee. It’s not that they got in there because the voters got them in, they got in there because the voters didn’t particularly care about who got the job.
What, then, do we really rate Manmohan Singh for in his first year in office? You don’t commission an opinion poll to figure out how good has been the government’s dealings with China and Pakistan. You don’t even need pollsters to measure the progress on reforms.
Singh’s biggest success lies in being there and still hanging on.
Manmohan Singh tussi great ho!
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