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Manmohan Singh has no credibility today. He was once the hero of the middle class for being the brains behind Narasimha Rao’s reforms that transformed India. The ancient Greeks, brooders par excellence on human behavior and life, had a concept called Enantiodromia. It principally meant that as soon as a process, a system, a person reached a peak – or hit rock bottom – inevitably it starts transforming into its opposite. It is the innate rhythm of normal time, Chronos.

Success is fickle: so are reputations: most of all life.  Live long enough and you can see yourself immaterial to the process and system you were once the guiding light of. The best humans could do was to seize the moment of destiny in time– Kairos, a significant tipping point of opportunity when dramatic success could be achieved and hope they do not muck it up – or live long enough to see its inevitable decline into being obsolete.   Singh had the good fortune to be with Rao when that shrewd man realized India was at its moment of Kairos and rammed through economic reforms, essentially because there was no option. For that act of gutsy benevolence Rao was ultimately marginalized by the powers that be in his own party and abandoned by the country. Which is as it should be – nations, as with people, do not like obligations, and nobody forgives a person who has done them a favor. Singh witnessed this spectacle, kept prudently silent, and when he was offered the top job, he fell into the understandable error of thinking he would be immune from the same process. We all feel that destiny will make an exception for us; the Greeks knew better. Success has to be paid for.

Singh is essentially a courtier, a superb implementer of other people’s vision. When he has to act on his own, he lacks the psychological resources. In this he resembles Talleyrand, who served the Ancien Regime, the Revolution, Napoleon, and the Restoration with ability and never became the dominant power. Talleyrand lacked that last ingredient of leadership, the ability to dominate and articulate a personal vision and had the good sense to function within that limitation. Singh, in his second term as PM thought that his personal probity and past success would be enough, no matter how inept, corrupt and bankrupt his administration became. It is a very Indian attitude. Personal virtue is held to compensate for systemic failure, as the tapasya of the Himalayan Yogis cancels out the depravity of the larger polity and prevents a catastrophe. But now the man hailed as intellectual and efficient has become a laughing stock.

The very virtues that got him his job, unquestioning loyalty to the party boss, intellectually sound, unemotional, conciliatory, unassertive, consensus seeking, open to discussion, have now become his flaws. The Greeks knew enough to be wary of that also. The very qualities that propel you to greatness will prove your fatal flaw – Hamartia. At this age he cannot develop new psychological capabilities, so he retreats into what seems to be a combination of exhaustion and deep personal humiliation that his integrity is being questioned. Unable to assert himself and rein in his colleagues or take any sort of decisive action against the tsunami of corruption that has suddenly surfaced in public consciousness, it is easy to feel sorry for him. He has the option to quit, but he cant as the designated successor has made foot-dragging into a statement of purpose. Singh perhaps also shares a universal Indian weakness for ‘position’ – the immense psychological validation it confers is addictive. It is a terrible thing to see.

George Bernard Shaw, who knew the Greeks very well, once said, “ Life levels all men. Only Death revels the eminent.” It would seem that Manmohan Singh will need a kinder posterity to vindicate him. At present he is worse than discredited, he is irrelevant.

Rohit Arya is a writer, a corporate trainer, a mythologist and a vibrant speaker. He has been an arts and cultural critic and social commentator for two decades. Rohit is the author of 5 books and been published in 5 European languages. He is an Author, Yogi, Polymath. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga