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arp2041
First term 7-8, he secured the US-India nuke deal that many people thought was improbable, he took decisive leadership on this front, steered India through some difficult times as the global economy was collapsing and actually garnered a LOT of respect from the international community coming from an economic background during the finical crisis, during this time he represented India incredibly well.
However I don't know what happened in the second term, he seems to have taken a step back from the limelight and allowed too many issues to crop up- inflation, corruption, low economic growth and such and whilst he can't be blamed for all of this alone BUT his seeming reluctance to properly engage with the Indian people and show clear leadership is really a massive failing on his part. For the last 2 years India has been in a pretty poor situation and has seemed pretty rudderless.
Having said all this, I can't help but like the MAN. He has always presented himself in a very dignified manner, he is by all the accounts I read an incredibly hard working man even at the age of 80- I remember after he had serious heart surgery a few years ago he was insistent on returning to work and did so a mere 2 weeks after major surgery. He apparently works very hard on a daily basis and has to be commended on some fronts, in the past 6 or so months a committee he had formed has cleared a lot of mega infra projects that had been stalled for years. He is also an entirely honest and honourable man who is above the slime that is Indian politics and even his biggest political opponents would concede he is clean and honest. Additionally he has a wise head, after 26/11 there was extreme pressure for a military response but MMS was able to keep this emotive response at bay and let calmer heads prevail which he is universally praised for in the international community. I think though he was never quite made for leadership, he is and always has been an entirely extraordinary economist/technocrat, he is no politician and this is very apparent. He was brought in by Sonia Gandhi because she felt he appealed to the Middle class of India and was someone she could control and this has turned out to be the case.
He will never be the fumbling ignorant fool responsible for all of India's woes some quarters will have you believe neither will he be India's most accomplished PM, the truth will lay somewhere in between. Could he have done more? Probably, but we may never know where the line Sonia Gandhi imposed on him was and what true power he actually had.
So overall I'd give him a 5/6 probably.
A decent man but not quite up to being a PM of a country like India, Norway/Sweden perhaps but not India.
No doubt what Dr MMS's example can show us is that India needs a decisive LEADER, let's hope such a person is in the PMO soon enough....
