Main opposition party is just short of blaming Man Mohan’s integrity or asking for his resignation or replacement

However, I am more concerned about the performance of the country’s development needs and Man Mohan as CEO not getting anywhere near the targets. I consider four sectors- Power, roads, irrigation and ports, as the most important and critical ones.
Performance of Eleventh Five Year Plan is the performance report of UPA and more so of Man Mohan Singh. As he was a technocrat administrator and not politician, many like me expected him to focus on these performance indicators. After all he had hardly to contribute much to the intrigues of politics.

Power: Man Mohan’s government in 2007-08 targeted to add 78,577 MW in the11th Plan by March 2012. It then revised the target downward to 62,374 MW. But by December 2010 only 32,012MW had been added. How much can be added in one year? Has he got some Aladdin to add the remaining 40%? How will the promise of Power for all by 2012- be attained? Will his nuclear power or that from Sun be of help? However, his finance minister prayed only for Indra and Lakshmi and not the Sun and wind god. By putting a target of 100,000 MW additions in Twelfth Plan, is he not setting an unachievable task for the next government when he or his party will or may not be there?

Road: Kamal Nath had set a target to build roads at 20 km a day or a length of 35,000 km in five years, increasing it from the earlier pace of around three km a day. According to the first work plan, NHAI was to award 122 projects covering around 12,000 km by the end of 2009-10 and 96 projects by the end of 2010-11. NHAI was able to award only a little over 70 projects. And the daily performance was dismal. The average length added each day was 4.6 km in 2007-08, 6 km in 2008-09, 7.4 km in 2009-10 and 3.9 km in the first nine months of this financial year. Can Joshi do what Kamal Nath couldn’t? Did Man Mohan change his minister for 15% cut rate? What is the going rate?

It is only with power and road that manufacturing sector can grow and flourish. Who can know it better than Man Mohan, the economist Prime Minister? How can Man Mohan take credit of being a great CEO prime minister with this dismal performance?

Irrigation: For irrigation to grow, irrigation is must. No other doles to farmers can make up for the absence of water. In the dismal Rs 45000 cr allocated for 283 canal projects under Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme since 1996-97, 90% projects are delayed by 2-8 years leading to 28-916% cost overrun. Why couldn’t the CEO devise a close monitoring of these critical infrastructure projects that can sustain his plan of universal food security?

Port: On port too, the capacity additions have been hardly 40% of the target. Can’t the Indian port engineers create deep enough ports? Why much of the containers destined for the country and carried by large vessels have to be trans-shipped at ports in Colombo, Singapore or Dubai? Why does the backup infrastructure such as connecting roads, railway lines and storage space at ports and at warehouses remain grossly inadequate?

Can the economist Prime Minister deny the failures? Should Man Mohan not resign as a failed CEO on some pretext and allow some younger ones to take charge?

Does he not hear the voice of the time coming in media? It is evident from the Chetan Bhagat’s column in Times of India where the names of Man Mohan Singh and Rajesh Talwar have appeared together.

Even Peter’s Principle demands that Man Mohan resigns before it’s too late.

It will be wise for Man Mohan Singh to hand over the responsibility to the Queen who can then pass it on again to one of her loyal chamchas.