While the crown prince continued his “suit-boot kisarkar” jibe to accuse the government of curtailing workers’ rights to favour the moneybags, the former regent chipped in to accuse the government of being in favour of hire-and-fire policies.

The diatribes of the new Leftist on the block from the Congress’s first family are understandable because his mother and himself have evidently decided to take their party back to its Nehruvian socialist moorings to counter Narendra Modi’s right-wing thrust. But the reason why the former prime minister has begun to meekly play the dynasty’s game is not very clear. On an earlier occasion, too, Manmohan Singh had echoed Sonia’s charge that Modi’s development programmes are a smokescreen for his communal agenda.

Yet, if anyone can appreciate the raison d’etre of Modi’s pro-reforms initiatives, it is Manmohan Singh who steered the Indian economy away from a closed system towards a new direction in 1991. For him, therefore, to join mother and son to try and block the reforms is strange. If he lacks the courage to speak out, which also explains why he allowed his own reforms agenda to be sabotaged by the Sonia-led national advisory council, he can at least keep quiet.

Besides, the best course for him would be to inform the Congress’s inner councils, which really comprise the mother and son, of the advisability of supporting the prime minister on some of his initiatives, such as the goods and services legislation if the land law is too controversial. Modi apparently expects Manmohan Singh to play such a mediatory role presumably because neither the queen nor the shehzada appears to have the intellectual wherewithal to appreciate the virtues of economic reforms.

Considering that Manmohan Singh had said that a return to a “state-controlled system” is neither “possible nor desirable”, it is odd that he is seemingly blindly following Sonia’s and Rahul’s diktats. Evidently, he has learnt nothing from the way the Congress president virtually compelled him to take the foot off the “accelerator of reforms”, as P. Chidambaram subsequently said, and led the party to its worst ever defeat last year because the stalling of the economy in the twilight period of the Manmohan Singh government compounded the atmosphere of doom and gloom created by the various corruption charges.

At the moment, Sonia is continuing to pursue her single-point objective of putting up roadblocks before the present government’s pro-market steps because she is aware that any sign of economic success will boost Modi’s position since that was the promise on which he came to power but has been unable to fulfill them for various reasons.

Among the reasons for his failure is the resistance to an open economy from within the saffron brotherhood by RSS affiliates like the protectionist Swadesh Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh. The RSS itself cannot be too pleased with the prospects of globalization, for the close interactions with the West will not only have an impact on the economy but also on culture where lifestyle matters – eating, drinking, choice of partners, etc - are concerned. According to the Nagpur patriarchs, all that will be detrimental to their interpretation of the Hindu way of life.

Modi is apparently trying to overcome these internal difficulties by persuading the objectors behind the scenes via BJP president Amit Shah and other interlocutors to be less obstructive. He has adopted the same approach towards the saffron militants and has had some success as can be seen from the scaling down of the earlier gharwapsi and love jehad campaigns. But, the pitch for him can still be queered by the raking up of the Ram temple issue, as the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has done.

But, even as Modi tries to set his own house in order, the upping of the ante by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi on the economic front can prove to be worrisome if only because the Congress has started showing faint signs of life, as the results in Bihar, in a Madhya Pradesh by-election and in rural Gujarat show.

No one can be more aware than Modi that the Congress is succeeding in getting to its feet because he has not been able to revive the economy fast enough. It is only when there are visible indications of progress and a detectable impact on the employment situation that he can breathe easy. But as long as he banks only on rhetoric with little to show on the ground, the Congress is likely to gain ground.

Modi’s only advantage is that he can depend on Sonia’s blinkered outlook and Rahul’s immaturity to undermine the Congress’s chances. As was evident in the Congress vice-president’s disastrous performance in a women’s college in Bengaluru where he tried to make fun of the “Swachh Bharat” and “Make in India” campaigns, his life in an echo chamber of his party’s servile followers has insulated him from real life. It is a pity that Manmohan Singh has chosen to become a part of this rootless group. (IPA Service)