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Between the Lines by Kuldip Nayar

THE impression I got from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after talking to him on the eve of Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajpakse's arrival in New Delhi was that India did not want to get directly involved in Colombo's peace talks with the LTTE.

The Prime Minister recalled what India had gone through in the past. He mentioned the Indian peace Keeping Force which was made to quit.

My impression has turned out to be correct because India has offered all support to the peace process without becoming part of it. All assistance would be available from outside and a tab would be kept on the progress made about the parleys between the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE.

The general belief in Colombo, where I was after Rajpakse's visit to India, was that New Delhi wanted to wait till after the elections in Tamil Nadu. (The ruling UPA has 40 MPs from Tamil Nadu and most of them have a bit of sympathy for the Lankan Tamils.)

I wanted the Prime Minister to tell me in his own words the distinctive feature of his one-and-a-half-year rule. Without any hesitation he said: the economy.

India was having a growth rate of more than eight per cent annually and the prospects of doing still better were good. By the time his government finished its tenure, he said, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Act would have covered the entire country.

More and more opportunity would be available in different fields and different areas, particularly in the countryside. He was confident about India's bright future and there was glow in his eyes when he said that. Foreign policy was doing well, he said.

In the last one and a half years of his government's tenure, America, Great Britain, Russia and Europe, all were "very friendly" to India. With China, the Prime Minister said, the discussions were going on on the border and Beijing had itself taken up "substantive points" of the problem.

Still L.K. Advani said that Manmohan Singh was a nikamma (inept) Prime Minister. The remark still rankled the Prime Minister, although he was laughing when he was repeating the words. He did not want to comment on the BJP or the disarray in which the party was. His elegance did not allow him to do that. But he did not think much of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government's record. "We are determined to end the role of money in elections," the Prime Minister said.

He mentioned the effort his government was making towards that direction by trying to allocate funds for financing the poll campaign of political parties. He has been always effusive and warm whenever I have discussed with him India-Pakistan relations. I have found him this time a bit distressed and disappointed.

He is not as optimistic as before because he says he does not know what is in the mind of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf. The Prime Minister says he has been impressed by President Musharraf at their meeting in New York and he may go to Pakistan to meet him.

"After all, I have an invitation for a visit," he adds. But he regrets that despite President Musharraf's promise, cross-border terrorism has not stopped and the machinery to sustain it has not been dismantled yet.

Maybe, General Musharraf is under pressure from within his own country, the Prime Minister wonders. He is full of praise for President Musharraf for trying to modernise his country. He may well turn out to be another Kamal Ataturk. "I wish him well," says the Prime Minister. "But he must appreciate my difficulties.

I have told him that I could not change the borders, nor could I divide the state on the basis of religion. I have no such mandate from the nation." The bomb blasts at Delhi a few months ago are uppermost in the Prime Minister's mind. He says that relations between India and Pakistan were improving at a good pace.

People were shedding mistrust. "Then the bomb blasts at Delhi takes place," says the Prime Minister. There is reverse and everything stops. "We reacted to the situation calmly and responsibly." But where do we go from here? Pakistan has to make sure that there is no cross-border terrorism. America too has "assured us on this point."

The meeting with the Prime Minister was a day before the Bangalore shootout. I told him that the people-to-people contact on a large scale, in thousands, along with free trade between the two countries would provide the sinews of peace and normalise the situation. In reply, the Prime Minister said that he was already being attacked for opening up points at the LoC. Increasing incidents of terrorism in India were being linked with his liberal policy.

As for trade, he said, he had proposed "several business packages" but Pakistan had turned them down on the ground that there had to be a settlement on Kashmir before the resumption of trade.

"The communists in India think that you are the World Bank man," I said. "Where does this remark fit in when everything we are doing is according to the common minimum programme to which we agreed before the formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)," countered the Prime Minister.

He was averse to join issue with the communists but wanted to know where the government had strayed off course.

He said none could deny that America was the most powerful country in the world and that its economy was the strongest. Probably, lest the Prime Minister should be misunderstood, he said: "I am not under US pressure of any type."

The Prime Minister was not unduly worried over Bangladesh. He said he held a long talk with Prime Minister Khalida Zia during his visit to Dhaka. He had invited her to visit India and hoped she would come soon.

What worried him about India was the "increasing provincial and parochial outlook." Political parties did not see things "in totality." They tended to perceive a situation from their own point of view.

"Certain issues have to be kept above politics because they relate to the country's welfare, its growth and progress," the Prime Minister said. He felt exasperated that parties did not rise above their "petty self."

When Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, I heard him making the same point: certain things had to be kept above politics because they concerned the country's interests. He too talked about the consensus.

Why does the same political party begin to view things differently when it is out of power, I wonder? Why can't the country's interests be kept above that of the parties?

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