'Seek people's mandate on N-deal'

New Delhi, Aug 25: The RSS is prodding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek a mandate from the people since he and his party Congress have adamantly made the Indo-US nuclear deal a matter of prestige.

In the Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece in its editorial observed that the UPA was trying all tricks to avoid an election and the Communists were bent on blocking the deal. The PM could have avoided the confrontation, but his lack of political savy and finess created this turmoil. The Left was hurt as the PM chose to take the issue to street, a matter that could have been sorted across the dining table, the paper said.

Knowing well the Left's antipathy to the Indo-US strategic engagement under a government run entirely at its mercy, the PM should have been more circumspect. It was the 'bloated ego' of Dr Singh and his over enthusiastic espousal of the US cause, that made him to invite present imbroglio, the paper wondered.

Dr Singh, notwithstanding the opinion poll, which game him a 78 per cent approval rating had no popular mandae other than of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. The supporting parties were not sure of his capacity to lead them to an electoral victory and that was the reason they wanted a delayed poll, the paper said.

The Left's antipathy to US was nothing new and its 'beholden love' for China was equally infamous. Between these two situations there was the political common ground of misplaced confidence, grand standing and overreach. Dr Singh not behaved as the head of a precariously held coalition and had tried to undercut the Left.

Such being the case in a democracy, testing the public mood should be welcomed and in the decade of 90s India had seen four Lok Sabha elections and six governments, but that did not put brakes on the economy. "India needs a responsive, popular and intensely national government", the paper said.

The paper also gave one possible way for survival when it said that he could continue the rest of the term as a minority government, in case the Left became ballistic and withdrew support.

There were precedents in the past but this was a mere wishful suggestion. Only Indira Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao could successfully run the minority government, the magazine observed.

UNI