Al Ahram, p.6, (22/8/2006)
Admitting failure
By: Sajini Dolarmani
Independence Days are usually suitable occasions for leaders to deliver vehement speeches full of achievements, ambitions and great tasks to be fulfilled, which necessitate the continuation of the current government in place to be able to accomplish them. However, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, surprised all on the 59th anniversary of India's Independence Day when he delivered a speech which is close to admitting failure. The voices of the young girls chanting fiery patriotic slogans were not in harmony with Singh's enumeration of failure of facing challenges specified by Jawaharlal Nehru on the first Independence Day, namely eradication of poverty, and diseases and the unequal opportunities for climbing the social ladder.
The most part of the speech dealt with hunger, and malnutrition which is devouring half of the Indian children who are under five years old, illiteracy that shrouds half of the Indian females, farmers who committed suicide because they could not repay their debts, the aggravating social and economic problems faced by a large sector of the Indian population whom the IT magic has not touched yet, and the corruption that is plaguing the judicial system and security system.
Everybody asks why did Singh prefer to overdo the opposition and why did he start to enumerates the negative aspects of the ruling regime although there were a lot of achievements that he could talk about? India managed to reach an 8% growth rate for the third successive year; technological and IT achievements are also very clear to everyone; the Nuclear agreement with the US has become a reality and everybody is ready that India would be the third largest economy in the world by the year 2050. Why did Singh choose to lower his optimism and to point to the inability of India to achieve its goals compared to China? The reason might be that Singh is so humble and does not possess the necessary political expertise to seethe the enthusiasm of the public. Also, he wanted to avoid the mistake committed by the BJP when it lost the elections because it talked about economic prosperity while one third of the Indians were suffering from poverty. Or he wanted to avoid any criticism to his government at a time when he faces a ferocious competition over the chairmanship of the Congress Party. All these are possible, but a more convincing one is that, Singh wanted to remind Indians on the 60th Independence Day of the Nehru dreams and to mobilize the public support to salvage his reform program that face impediments set by the members of the ruling coalition. So he wanted to strike while the iron is hot instead of giving promises that might prove to be empty ones.
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