Poor, weak: man or woman?

That is what it seems after the Sunday column by Tavleen Singh in IE: 

• It is important to remember when we wring our hands over Dr Manmohan Singh’s timidity that he has a boss and that Sonia Gandhi has the most enviable political job in the world. She has immense power without any accountability. Everything that goes wrong is blamed on poor old Dr Manmohan Singh who after a long and illustrious career in government will now end up being remembered as the man who failed to improve governance at a time when India needs it more than anything else.

• If we had a semblance of modern governance, we could overtake our old rival China in less than two decades. 

I terribly hate the words “overtake our old rival” because when we ‘overtaken’ we always leave behind someone!!

Nevertheless, get on: 

• A meaningful Cabinet change would have been to scrap the ministry of Human Resource Development altogether. 

•  Since the last general election we have seen the National Advisory Council take more decisions than the Government of India. It is to Soniaji’s private Cabinet that we owe almost every major policy decision taken in the past two years. This is why it is probably a waste of time criticising the Prime Minister’s feeble attempts to stir the dead roots of his government with a reshuffle.