A meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Dr. Manmohan Singh should in the normal run of democracy have passed without inviting any remarks. Once the heat and hostilities of an election end, governance should be a cooperative enterprise, with the incumbent seeking advice or information from the one he succeeds. As Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for example, was known to maintain cordial relations with several Congress leaders, even telling them he wanted to benefit from their experience of longer years in government. In the current dispensation, too, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley makes it a point to keep in touch with his predecessor, P. Chidambaram, and >Dr. Singh, on matters economic . This is a healthy practice, and if Mr. Modi and Dr. Singh, as it has subsequently emerged, >discussed the economy and foreign policy , the Prime Minister certainly should be lauded for reaching out to his predecessor in office, a well-regarded economist.
When Mr. Modi tweeted about the meeting, he left unsaid the fact that it was he who had initiated the meeting. Therefore it fuelled speculation, especially as the meeting came within hours of a very public exchange of barbs between the two. At the just-concluded first anniversary celebration of the government, BJP leaders had spent more time attacking the UPA government than highlighting its own achievements. A day earlier, a former TRAI Chairman had accused Dr. Singh of wrongdoing in the >2G spectrum scandal , two months after the latter was questioned in the coal mine leasing scam, leading to another chain of speculation. It was only later in the evening, when the Congress realised what was happening and clarified that Dr. Singh had gone to 7 Race Course Road at the invitation of the Prime Minister, and that the only subjects discussed were the economy and foreign policy, that the picture cleared. While it is unclear why Mr. Modi himself did not clarify at the outset how the meeting had come about, it is evident that the Prime Minister is in need of a better public image at this point. He is no more in the sweet spot he was just a year ago: the economy is not doing as well as was hoped, investment is not coming at levels that were anticipated, and the BJP is yet to recover from the abject defeat it suffered in the Delhi State elections, or from the jokes about Mr. Modi’s sartorial choices. The Opposition has pinned the government down on the Land Bill. All this together has taken sheen off the government. Rhetoric — even the occasional jumla , a word the BJP president recently used to denote an empty promise — can be forgiven when uttered in the heat of an election campaign. But when an elected leader and his cohorts seemingly continue to remain in poll mode, people begin to ask: when will the party we voted to power get down to the serious business of governance? Mr. Modi needs to change the optics, if not the objective situation itself. And this meeting is perhaps the first step in that direction.
