Singh is King? Mabe, but who is the kingmaker?

6th April 2009

Singh is King? Mabe, but who is the kingmaker?

“The job of a leader of a country requires expertise in a lot of fields that are not humanly possible in a single person. A head of state has to rely on experts in various fields to carry out his or her job”

Manmohan Singh may have been the most educated, intelligent and the smartest prime minister we ever had and may be the least powerful as well. No one credits him for any of his accomplishments and he is never seen as the real leader. The real leader in Sonai Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi will step aside when Rahul Gandhi is ready to stake his claim on the primeministership and till then we will have "temp" prime ministers like Manmohan Singh, something like Anil Kumble as the test captain till M S Dhoni was ready for it.

Photograph © Picturejockey

The most recent example fo this is the SMS I got. Please not it is "Sonia Gandhi" who has selected Gurdas Kamat not "Manmohan Singh", not the "party leadership".

I have always felt that perception is more real than reality and I have been thinking about it ever since I posted the above post on Picturejockey. I said that no one views Manmohan Singh as the leader. Sonia Gandhi is seen as the ultimate leader and she is the one who calls the shots. There are instances when the most powerful person is not taking the most powerful position. Instead he or she takes up another role that is more suitable for any number of reason and the biggest examples of this I can remember is Bill Gates stepping down from the position of CEO of Microsoft to take up the role of "Chief Mentor". Steve Ballmer may be the CEO but when you think about Microsoft, you thing about Bill Gates.

Is it really important for PM to look like the real leader or is it more important that he has the right qualifications to be the prime minister. He also has a job and it is important that his job is done well. The country is not affected if your or mine job is not done well but it is definitely affected if his job is not done well.

On the other hand, the job of a leader of a country requires expertise in a lot of fields that are not humanly possible in a single person. A head of state has to rely on experts in various fields to carry out his or her job so the second scenario is that you have a very good and charismatic leader who has the ability to lead people and more important who is perceived as a leader and who has a good set of experts to give the right advise and he or she is smart enough to take the right advise.

What do you see in your leader?