NOTEBOOK
Manmohan Singh: An easy boss with some mischievous humour
The former Prime Minister did not make much of his remarkable career and was
willing to answer uncomfortable questions
SUHASINI HAIDAR,
There is a simple way of knowing what world leaders are like, which is to observe the
demeanour of their staff. While sitting down for interviews with leaders, I have often been
more struck by how nervous or ill-tempered their secretaries and advisers are than by the
leaders themselves who, by and large, want to make a good impression. If those in the
background are relaxed and smiling, it indicates that the leader is easy-going. If the staff are on
their toes, shifting anxiously as the interview proceeds, it suggests that the leader is imperious.
I once sat through a particularly difficult interview where the leader’s press adviser sat right
behind him, fixing me with a pleading stare, sweating profusely every time I asked a question
that the boss may not have liked, and repeatedly trying to cut the interview short.
By that count, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who passed away last week, was an
extremely easy boss. I seldom saw anyone in his office in New Delhi’s South Block appear
worried in his presence. In 2009, when Dr. Singh won a re-election after completing a full term
from 2004 to 2009, a first at that time since Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, I was able to test
my theory on a number of occasions. He granted me an interview on the campaign trail, to
speak about his initiatives with the U.S. and Pakistan, charges of corruption against his
government, and plans for the future. The 2009 win was particularly significant as he had come
through a heart bypass just months before the election, and in his interview, he was clear that
it would be his last election (he didn’t contest in 2014). He also gave the television channel I was
working for (CNN-IBN) access to the Prime Minister’s home to interview his wife, Gursharan
Kaur, and their daughters. Later, I also attended a children’s day show where Dr. Singh
interacted with 60 children, who posed largely unscripted questions to him. One of them
asked, “Why do you wear a blue turban?” Another asked, “How do you feel when you are called
a weak Prime Minister?” One child was scathing about India’s education system, saying
“thousands of children are begging on the streets”. Even when I asked Dr. Singh about being
called a “puppet Prime Minister” with then-Congress president Sonia Gandhi holding the
strings, he replied with unerring politeness, and with no interference from his advisers.
While his bearing was serious, Dr. Singh wasn’t above some mischievous humour. At a formal
lunch he hosted for a visiting dignitary, he was pressed repeatedly about raising India’s climate
change commitments. The guest proceeded to give him a lecture on all the new technology
that the West was adopting, including in electric vehicles. Dr. Singh listened politely, and
whispered something to an aide. When the convoy arrived to ferry the guest away, Dr. Singh
handed him, not into the white Ambassador cars that were normally used, but into a tiny Reva,
the earliest Indian electric vehicle, with a slightly sardonic smile. “Voh gussa pee jaate hain (He
drinks up his anger),” Mrs. Kaur said when I asked her why he never seemed to lose his cool.
Dr. Singh had a remarkable career, but he didn’t make too much of it. In fact, he suppressed
any reporter’s instinct for emotive copy. His family did the same, telling me in an interview that
his favourite food was lauki ka halwa and kadi chawal (he was vegetarian) and that they hadn’t
been on a holiday in decades. Seeing the disappointment on my face at these slightly
colourless responses for the profile I was working on, his daughter said, almost
conspiratorially, that I should ask him to sing. She disclosed that he had sung to them as
children, and had also composed songs for his grandchildren as lullabies. However, I never got
my wish. When I asked him at the children’s day event to perform his favourite song, he
blushed and quickly turned to his wife, known for her kirtan singing, saying, “She is much better
than me”.
suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in
