Two conclusions can be drawn from these mid-air press conferences, which the prime minister seems to prefer instead of any interaction with the media on the ground. One is that he has realised that his stock has sunk further along with the rupee and that there is now no chance of the party, let alone the country, looking to him to revive the economy.

What this means is that he is at the lowest point of his career, notwithstanding a faint flicker of defiance in his last speech in Parliament in which he blamed the BJP for stalling reforms by disrupting the House. He is aware that the country at present is looking to finance minister P Chidambaram and Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan to breathe life into the economy rather than to the prime minister. As such, Manmohan Singh is seemingly ready to bow out. While doing so, however, he could not avoid displaying the ingrained instincts of sycophancy embedded in the party’s DNA.

There was no need, for instance, for him to mention Rahul Gandhi’s name as the next prime minister, especially when the latter’s readiness, and capability, for the job are in serious doubt. This is where the second conclusion comes in. It is that the Congress’s feudalism has become so deep-rooted that it has begun to distort the party’s perception of the situation on the ground. This subservience to the Nehru-Gandhi family was evident in the passage of the food security legislation despite its economic pitfalls. There was no one in the party who could dare to point these out to the reigning “queen” with sufficient forcefulness although she has at least realised that the resources for the measure are not there and will have to be found.

Similarly, Manmohan Singh thought it prudent to favour the heir-apparent’s name for the PM’s job although no one can be more aware than the prime minister that the next few years will be economically far more testing than any period in the recent past. Whichever party comes to power, it will have to deal with the gargantuan problems posed by the never-before-attempted task of procuring, storing, transporting and distributing millions of tonnes of foodgrains for three-fourths of the 1.2 billion population, not to mention keeping an eye on the fiscal deficit slipping into a deep red.

It will take a team of highly capable economists and administrators to be able to deal with the situation. The task will be all the more onerous if, God forbid, there is a failure of the monsoon and a decline in food production. If, in that case, India has to import food, it will be back to the ship-to-mouth scenario of the 1960s.

True, the country may not have to experience such a worse-case scenario. Even then, it is patent enough that India will have to vigorously persist with the reforms process, not least because of the setbacks it has suffered in the last few years under the “dream team” of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. In the absence of the first named, it is the steadying hand of the present finance minister, which will be needed to cope with what is likely to be a critical period.

However, it will be a situation where the inexperienced Rahul Gandhi will be a misfit if he is at the helm, as Manmohan Singh has envisaged. Arguably, if he had his late father’s charisma of the pre-Bofors years – 1984-89 – he at least might have enthused the party cadres and rejuvenated the organization even if his contributions to the nuts and bolts of administration and economic policy were limited.

But, as his electoral failures in Bihar and U.P. have shown, he lacks the appeal of the Nehru-Gandhis, which has been the family’s USP for many years. Yet, while lacking in charisma, he has inherited some of the family’s dubious traits, such as hauteur, of which he boasted at a party meeting where he said that he was not as lenient as his mother and could be stern. To be effectively stern, however, there is a need to have a successful track record in electoral, administrative or intellectual terms. The not-so-young prince does not have any such achievement.

The Congress has long been beholden to the family for providing a focal point, which keeps the faction-prone party together. But, there is a dividing line between gratitude and loyalty on one hand and sycophancy on the other. A mindless adherence to the latter can prove to be politically fatal. (IPA Service)