Between the two, however, my call wouldn’t be that tough, or risky, if I chose “apolitical” Dr Singh’s claim over his then, very political prime minister’s.

The situation now is a little bit similar. What Manmohan Singh as prime minister is trying to do to our foreign policy, or rather the way in which India relates to the post-Cold War world, is comparable to what he did to its economy in 1991. The Left actually gets it when they say the nuclear deal is not just about energy, that it is a paradigm shift. There are aspects of this where they do not get it, but that is a different argument for another Saturday. The relevant issue now is that when Manmohan Singh pushes this “shift” in 2008, which course is his political leader of today going to choose? To use him as a convenient scapegoat if things go wrong, a sacrificial one if the party decides to retreat and bury the hatchet with the Left in his expendable, “apolitical” back, or embrace him with pride, protect him in this moment of change and challenge, and draw away the fire and the venom from him?

Sonia now faces one of those moments in a leader’s life when the choice is between statesmanship and cynical politicking. Some in her party are so sure of not winning, or even contesting another election that they would rather stretch this term into its last day, the party and the country be damned. These political Geoffrey Boycotts would happily run out a partner — even their captain — if that helps them lengthen their innings. Many of the Congress stalwarts (unlike Sonia and Rahul) haven’t won an election for decades and have neither any intention of contesting, nor any hope of winning another. Many are simply too old, even by their party’s chilled geriatric standards, to expect another term even if the party returns to power. For them, this is a desperate quest for a few last months in power.

This is a call Sonia has to take, and indications are that she is going the right way. While both will have their fans and critics, nobody can dispute that Narasimha Rao and Sonia are very different as individuals, politicians and leaders. Also, that the Sonia-Manmohan equation is qualitatively very different from that between Rao and Manmohan. Rao merely saw Manmohan as a brilliant economist, an honest, efficient civil servant who could be used in a particular role in an apolitical manner for some time. Sonia does not, and cannot, see Manmohan Singh the same way. The prime minister of India is not an apolitical job. And you cannot appoint somebody your prime minister and then tell him, and the nation, particularly the voters, that he is not a full prime minister. That he is apolitical, a caretaker, a kind of PM-lite. She is also conscious of the fact that the same “apolitical” man actually took the political call of his life when he accepted the prime ministership that she had decided not to take, that she could not have trusted any of her other partymen with, even as Mani Shankar Aiyar, Arjun Singh and Renuka Chaudhary wept. Melodrama and flamboyance are not his style, so he won’t resign in a huff, embarrass Sonia and rock his party. And she is not about to hang him out to dry by himself merely on the charge of being apolitical.

There is another, purely political and electoral factor. No party can afford to go to the polls with its prime minister bloody-nosed, punch-drunk and humiliated. India’s electoral history on this is unequivocal. Each time a prime minister has been diminished and humiliated, from Chandra Shekhar to Gowda-Gujral, the incumbent party, or political coalition, even its outside supporters, have been thrashed. Similarly Sitaram Kesri’s destruction of Gowda and Gujral (both supported by the Congress from outside) brought the BJP into power. In the fifth year of your government if you go to the voters and say you dumped your prime minister because he was “apolitical” and too unbending, you do not need any psephologists to predict the result. Incumbents have such a low probability of returning to power anyway, but none has ever won after humiliating and diminishing its own chief executive in an election year.

You do that, and you play straight into the hands of L.K. Advani’s charge of Manmohan Singh being India’s weakest prime minister ever. You do that and all the other stories and evidence will tumble out of the closet. Of how so many of his cabinet colleagues, from Arjun Singh to Ramadoss, from Antony now (behaving like the chairman of the confederation of the armed forces’ trade unions) to Ram Vilas Paswan have been allowed to walk all over him. His critics, mainly cynical Congressmen who cower at the thought of the next election, may call it his obsession. But every voter now knows that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has chosen to make this nuclear deal the cornerstone of his five-year legacy. If you allow short-term greed to thwart him, the voter will either conclude that the prime minister was our weakest ever, and that Advani is right, or that this party traded his head and reputation in exchange for a couple more months in power.

Yes, with inflation running high, this is not the best time for elections. But for an incumbent there is never any “best” time for elections, even astrologically, or the NDA would have won in 2004! Ideally, for the Congress, the best time will be after 10 years when Rahul has the age and experience so important in India. But today even a Mugabe cannot get away with delaying elections. Elections will come, one way or the other, any time between November and March. So Sonia has to decide: does her government proceed with this deal, secure India’s future, and take a reasonable shot at winning the election? Or does it dump the deal, diminish its prime minister, damage India’s future, and definitely lose the elections — and all of it for a couple more months in power, if at all?

sg@expressindia.com