Happy Birthday! Dr. Manmohan Singh

Do nice people have a chance in this country? Take our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh for instance. He has been bashed from all possible sections, that include his political peers, civil society, media and almost anyone who could take a dig at him. He has been called a ‘silent’ prime minister, dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat, underachiever, ‘Poodle’ and ‘Puppet’ and all sorts of condescending things. But the fact is that he is  perhaps the only educated, wise and descent politician in the country whom you can look up to.


Who else???

I am so glad that he is our prime minister. His grace, intellect and dignity is par-excellence and exemplary. And to be fair to be him, in the dirty constraints of coalition politics he has been able to perform really well.

But see what we do to him!!! The other day my colleague & friend Prof. Ray Titus made a very interesting comment. He said that the very fact that Dr. Manmohan Singh lost an election makes him a qualified candidate in the political arena and public life. Interesting! just think about it...

But do we really deserve him?

In yet another incident, according to a newspaper report, the officer who was instrumental in stopping the award of a multi-crore annual maintenance contract on a single tender basis at a public sector enterprise was harassed for his honesty. The whistle-blower was reportedly forced to fight a five-year-long legal battle after he was implicated in disproportionate assets by the company officials and government-backed investigation agency.

The result? The whistle-blower saw officers 10 years junior to him being promoted while he fought his court battle to clear his name. If the media reports are to be believed, then the resulting erosion of trust on the organization’s leadership and progressive disengagement of the whistle blower and employees like him is anybody’s guess. Not surprisingly the organization has seen series of employee protests over the past few years.

Do nice people really have a chance?