• Thumbs down on Govt’s handling of farmers’ suicides, price rise and terrorism

• Pretenders can dream on: only a fifth want someone outside Gandhi family to replace PM

The aam admi seems to have given Prime Minister Manmohan Singh just the mix of good and bad news he may have hoped for on the eve of a difficult parliamentary session. Ordinary citizens think of their prime minister as an honest, wise and trustworthy person, though they are not sure of his being a strong leader. They are, on balance, satisfied with his work but this has not made him into a charismatic leader whose popularity may threaten the first family in Indian politics.

The PM may have desperately hoped for this piece of bad news as much as some appreciation of his work. But there is one piece of bad news that he may not have wanted. The aam admi is unhappy about how the PM has handled price rise, farmer’s suicides and terrorism.

These conclusions are based on the first nationwide survey focussed on the performance of Manmohan Singh after taking the office more than two years ago. Conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), The Indian Express-CNN-IBN survey, broadcast on CNN-IBN tonight, is perhaps the first one of its kind focussing exclusively on a range of questions dealing with the evaluation of a prime minister. The poll will be re-broadcast tomorrow at noon.

A total of 1,884 respondents were interviewed at their residence between July 16 and July 19. The conclusions based on this relatively small survey are broadly reliable since the interviews were not concentrated in some towns or only a few states but were spread across 18 states. The profile of the respondents interviewed matches the national profile very closely (see methodology box inside).

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