A month ago, the Congress high command administered a snub to Singh through its spokesperson. This weekend, Congress President Sonia Gandhi did so at a public function through the unspoken word. A day after he wondered at the Family’s ways of “evaluation of loyalty”, she ignored him at a university convocation in Delhi. To make the point, she lavished praise on the prime minister’s role in enhancing higher education. The context may have been political, but the non-mention of the Union human resource development minister was factually correct. Like his predecessor in the NDA government, Murli Manohar Joshi, Singh has been more interested in using the post to build an ideological constituency for himself. The only significant expansion that is happening in higher education is inadvertent, because of the institution of OBC quotas. On Arjun Singh’s watch, in fact, expansion by the private sector has been stifled by an obstructionist regulatory regime.

So, even as the Congress considers Arjun Singh’s amended statement of loyalty “till I live” to the Family, the Centre must take action. His has been a four-year record of abdication; at least the last year of this government’s term should see some effort at recompense in the ministry. If Arjun Singh proves to be too much of a stalwart for the Congress to cast away, at least higher education must be hived off the HRD ministry and entrusted to a more willing lieutenant, maybe even the deliberately sidelined minister of state, D. Purandareshwari. Singh’s soap opera could then be an independent, and inconsequential, sideshow.