Read Online The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru - Free Book Online

clout, apart from the officer’s own standing within the civil service. As the bureaucratic link between the PM and senior ministers and secretaries to government, the principal secretary commands authority and influences policy. Most principal secretaries have been extremely capable men, well regarded by their peers and respected by their subordinates, like P.N. Haksar in Indira Gandhi’s PMO, P.C. Alexander in Rajiv’s, A.N. Varma in Narasimha Rao’s, Satish Chandran in Gowda’s, N.N. Vohra in Gujral’s and Brajesh Mishra in Vajpayee’s. However, every now and then, a nondescript official of limited talent has also adorned that job.
    The national security adviser is an institution created during Vajpayee’s first term, after India declared herself a nuclear weapons power and a National Security Council (NSC) was established. The NSA is the executive head of the council and, within the PMO, typically deals with the ministries of defence and external affairs, the service chiefs and intelligence agencies and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Since Manmohan Singh’s PMO also included a special adviser, a novelty created to accommodate Narayanan, part of the NSA’s turf, namely the area of internal security, was hived off to him.
    Mani Dixit was, without doubt, the dominant personality among the three. His stature ensured that T.K.A. Nair was not quite the ‘principal’ secretary that many of his predecessors had been. Of course, Nair’s immediate predecessor, the larger-than-life Brajesh Mishra, was more than just a principal secretary. I once jokingly remarked to Dr Singh that in Vajpayee’s time the principal secretary functioned as if he were the PM, while in his case, it was being said that the PM functioned like a principal secretary. This was a comment on Dr Singh’s attention to detail, his involvement in the nitty-gritty of administration, his chairing of long and tedious meetings with officials, which Vajpayee rarely did. He ignored the remark, knowing well that it was also a taunt, drawing attention to the fact that Sonia was the political boss.
    Nair was not Dr Singh’s first choice for the all-important post of principal secretary. He had hoped to induct N.N. Vohra, who had given me the news of my job. Not only was he a fellow refugee from west Punjab, now Pakistan, but both had taught in Punjab University and Vohra also went to Oxford, though some years after Dr Singh. Vohra even cancelled a scheduled visit to London to be able to join the PMO. Sonia Gandhi had another retired IAS officer, a Tamilian whose name I am not at liberty to disclose, in mind for the job. He had worked with Rajiv Gandhi and was regarded as a capable and honest official. However, he declined Sonia’s invitation to rejoin government on a matter of principle—he had promised his father that he would never seek a government job after retirement.
    With these two distinguished officers ruled out, Dr Singh turned to Nair, a retired IAS officer who had worked briefly as secretary to the PM in Gujral’s PMO and had also served as Punjab’s chief secretary, the top bureaucrat in the state. Nair’s name was strongly backed by a friend of Dr Singh’s family, Rashpal Malhotra, chairman of the Chandigarh-based Centre for Research on Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID). Dr Singh himself was the chairman of the CRRID and Nair a member of its governing board. Apart from his stint in the Gujral PMO, Nair had neither held the rank of secretary in any of the powerful ministries on Raisina Hill—home, finance and defence—nor in any key economic ministry. He had only done so in the less powerful ministries of rural development and environment and forests. In short, he was a bureaucratic lightweight.
    Always impeccably attired, Nair, small-built and short, lacked the presence of a Brajesh Mishra, whose striking demeanour commanded attention. He rarely gave expression to a clear or bold opinion on file, always signing off with a