The new Indian PM

The choice of Dr. Singh, who is a Sikh, would help in healing of hatred between the Sikhs and the Hindus in general and with the Gandhi family in particular, that began when Mrs. Indira Gandhi ordered the sacrilege of the Golden Temple and was later assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard. It erupted in riots between India's Hindu and Sikh communities. Mr. Singh now becomes the PM because another Gandhi has declined the position, a fact that is bound to sink positively in the minds of the Sikhs.

However, there are many negatives in the incumbency of Mr. Manmohan Singh that the editor has not spoken about nor hinted at. Mr. Singh is not a politician and therefore lacks the political skills that in the short and long turn may be more important qualities than those of an economist and a reformist with impeccable credentials. Mr. Singh, without the political stature, would be running a government with diverse coalition partners including the likes of Lalu Yadav and leftist groups who want the government to scrap most of the reformist agenda. Thus at a time when India needs a strong leader, Mr. Singh at best can give India a leadership whose emphasis would be on compromise rather than bold, unwavering decisions that the BJP was capable of taking, decisions that has made India shine though ironically helping kick BJP out of office.

On the Bangladesh-India relations, a government under Mr. Singh, its well meaning potentials highlighted in the editorial notwithstanding, the change is not a good one for Bangladesh. The "handsome" compliments given to the new Indian prime minister Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina were good initiatives but then the hopes the editor placed on Mr. Singh for rendering a friendly ear on the "notorious" river linking project could be well and truly misplaced. The Indian system operates quite differently and professionally. The river linking project was conjured by the previous government not at the political level but at the professional one. Those professionals are still there and they will behave the same way as they did under the BJP. The point must not be forgotten that the Congress had conjured another absurd project called the Barbed Wire Fence in the 1980s to keep Bangladesh under pressure. The same Congress is therefore unlikely to back out of the river linking project due to our sweet talk on the friendly ears of Mr. Singh.

Under Mr. Singh, the Indian government will be weaker and for us, more difficult. The strength of the Indian government is not our concern, but Bangladesh-India bilateral relations are. For the latter to improve, the need for us is to have an India policy that we don't at the moment where there has to be a quid pro quo, where the scrapping of the water linking project, trade imbalance, etc. has to be matched against India's requests for road transit, sale of gas, etc.