Manmohan Singh: A good man let down by the party

Jairam Ramesh has ascribed the ruling party's plight to its failure in "perception management" and its inability to "sell effectively, more aggressively" its performance track record.

Manmohan Singh himself maintains that history will judge him - and his government - far better than his peers or the contemporary commentariat have done.

He continues to maintain, quite contrary to popular perception of "policy paralysis", that "no other decade has recorded as much development as there has been in the last 10 years" of the UPA under his prime ministership.

However, the turning point for Manmohan Singh really came half-way into his second term, in his interaction with TV editors on Feb 16, 2011, when he sought to extenuate the mounting concerns about corruption in his government as an "aberration" that had to be tolerated for the sake of "coalition dharma", before giving expression to a plea of helplessness that "things are not entirely the way I would like them".

And in this admission perhaps lay the key to his government's crash of image and what his former media adviser, Sanjaya Baru, says led to his becoming an "object of ridicule".