In Narendra Modi, India has a Prime Minister whose style is the opposite of that of his predecessor. Manmohan Singh was seen as indecisive, ponderous or at least, if you were favourable to him, overly cautious. He was also believed to be weak and waffling.
Let’s look at a few aspects of this. The first is the way in which he deals with the bureaucracy. On June 3, he had a meeting with secretaries of all departments to understand what was going on. “The top babus have been told to be brief in their presentation and according to a circular issued on Saturday, each secretary would be given 10 minutes’ time to present a 10-slide presentation,” a report said. In one of his interviews, Mr Modi has said he does not read files. His style is not to govern through “academic studies” (his words).
To understand issues, he will not read but rather he will listen. The people he listens to are bureaucrats who are expected to read the files and then reduce their content to a few lines with which they orally brief Mr Modi. After this simplification, Mr Modi then understands the issue and gives his quick decision or comment. The Prime Minister’s preference for PowerPoint presentations, with their reduction of complex and diverse matters to bullet points, is in line with this style.
I was on a television show discussing this a few days ago and said there were three things that were striking: first, that the PM was overly dependent on other people for information, given his reluctance or inability to read long documents. And the second that such quickness in decision-making was not necessarily a good thing. A retired bureaucrat on the show was offended. She said that this style was not unique and that “no PM reads files.” However, I find it difficult to compare the style of
Mr Modi and Dr Singh and see them as functioning in the same fashion. The reason Dr Singh was thought to be all those things I have described above is that he was a creature of detail, and of mastery over facts. His interviews show his grasp over complexity.
He was indecisive, or thought to have been indecisive, because when one is immersed in detail and fact, easy and quick solutions are usually difficult to arrive at. Writing in a newspaper, analyst Praveen Swami gave an example of one such instance. After the attack of the LeT on Mumbai, the PM looked over the options for retaliation. He was told by the military that airstrikes against terror camps were possible but “precise coordinates and adequate imaging weren’t available.”
The Co AS “told Dr Singh he couldn’t promise special forces’ strikes would be successful either. No one could guarantee missile strikes wouldn’t escalate into war, or even a nuclear exchange — and no one could guarantee war would compel Pakistan’s military to change course.”
The Prime Minister did nothing, and it is easy to see why. In this instance being indecisive and waffling was not a bad thing.
Another aspect of Mr Modi’s style is his desire to control. A report from a website this week said that Mr Modi was consolidating power and decision-making in the Prime Minister’s Office: “secretaries of various government departments have been told that files sent by the PMO should be cleared immediately, and the secretaries should not place the files for the concerned ministers’ attention.”
“This directive,” the report said, “will make ministers redundant in key decision-making areas. Joint secretaries at the PMO will be in charge of specific subjects and ministries, and will take decisions on the Prime Minister’s directions. These, the secretaries, who head various government departments, are expected to clear without delay.”
There is a positive way of looking at this, and that is accountability. When the Prime Minister thumps his chest and says he is looking after everything, he is not passing the buck, as Dr Singh was thought to have done in his tenure. The negatives are obvious and we will not go over them today.
Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist
