Dr. Singh himself also did not seem to have a very high opinion of politicians; and consequently distanced himself to a great extent from them; and this indeed turned out to be his undoing; for politics is a different ball-game. Politics involves building bridges, and the bringing together of peoples, even if they are not in agreement with each other on all topics, for the greatest good of all concerned. Politics is about winning the hearts of people; it involves touching, shaking hands, hugging, and touching the chords of the heart, whereby you are able to win the hearts of people so that they get to love you and all that you stand for, and Indian politics have people like Mayavati, Narendra Modi, who have proved that they are unbeatable at this game; people listen with bated breath and hang on to every word when they begin to speak. Such people are able to ride over critics and use their influence to carry the day in the end; these people do not hide away when faced with opposition or people who have a different viewpoint than theirs; they do not get judgemental in condemning other players; they rather prefer to get down in the centre of the action, stand up for their views and put their entire might behind them and at the end win the day, even if many people are not to be in agreement with them.
Dr. Manmohan Singh had in his wisdom, decided to distance himself hoping that Sonia Gandhi would handle the politics part of his job, while he would concentrate on the actual governance; but he is the Prime Minister of the country, the leader of a coalition government; he can ill afford to ignore any members of his own party, leave alone any other coalition party members, it becomes his duty to ensure that all politicians in the coalition were kept in good humour; that he failed miserably at this is evidenced by the fact that in his biggest initiative on the Indo-US atomic deal, he could only get P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal to come out openly in his support.
Dr. Manohan Singh had raised many a hope of deliverance for the middle class who had seen in him a mirror of themselves; a middle-class honest, gentlemanly, decent, hardworking and qualified man who was chosen to lead. However, in politics there is a different game at play; you have to stick to your convictions, tolerate those who differ opinion with you and work differently, face and be amongst the people, communicate with them and use your own strength to convince others and bring them around to your way of thinking. Dr. Singh, by doing this could have brought about sea changes in the system, but sadly, a golden chance seems to have been thrown by the wayside.
