All anniversaries are not for celebrating. The third anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government is one such. Manmohan Singh may well wonder what he has achieved in the last three years save remaining prime minister. The office of the prime minister, its dignity and its authority, has been seriously eroded. There are too many instances of failure and procrastination. It is easy to blame these on the fact that Mr Singh heads a coalition government. It is true that the Left parties can actually paralyse the functioning of the government, but this is not the only reason behind Mr Singh’s seeming inactivity. The principal reason is that Mr Singh is unwilling to assert his own authority. He seems to be circumscribed by the idea that he is not his own master and that his power is derived from an act of sacrifice performed by Sonia Gandhi. A prime minister is as good as the use he makes of the authority that has been vested in him. Mr Singh seems to be unaware of this and appears to constantly turn to her to seek her approval. This has not enhanced either the image of Mr Singh or that of the UPA government.

This poor image of the prime minister is compounded by the fact that the third anniversary comes in the wake of an electoral rout. The elections to the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha have confirmed the general perception that the Congress is nowhere in north Indian politics. While the prime minister may not be responsible for the plight of his party, there is no doubt that electoral reverses will further inhibit decision-making at the highest level. The second half of a premiership is always stalked by the shadow of the forthcoming elections. In Mr Singh’s case, this is more true than in that of the others since he himself is not a vote-winner and his advocacy of economic reforms is seen as a liability in an election. There are no prizes for predicting that all legislations remotely connected with economic reforms will be filed and forgotten till the general elections.

In the near future, the big ticket item on the prime minister’s list is the nuclear deal with the United States of America. This remains in a sea of uncertainty and ambiguity. If the deal comes through, it is likely to win for Mr Singh more friends in Washington than in India. The government of India can take no credit for the resolution of the crisis in Nepal but the prime minister may well be ruing the fact that he chose Karan Singh to be his personal emissary in Kathmandu. Mr Singh has often projected Jawaharlal Nehru as his exemplar. The latter once lamented à la Robert Frost that he had miles to go before he slept. The lines are emphatically not applicable to someone who refuses to achieve even when he has the power to achieve.