Media is a fickle-minded creature. The same journalists who danced to the tune of BJP have done a somersault and now busy singing paeans to Sonia Gandhi for her "sacrifice" and political astuteness. The Italian born lady, on her part, is basking in the glory of the ceaseless media attention on her. Which brings us to the question what prompted the lady to turn down the most powerful post of the largest democracy of the world to give it away to a non-politician on a silver platter, so to say.

To my mind, behind what seems to be Mrs. Gandhi's unusual decision lies a more pedestrian reason: deep inside her, she knows she is not a prime ministerial material. It is one thing to lead an essentially issue-less campaign among rural masses, who are besotted with anything ending with Gandhi surname, it is another cup of tea altogether to rule a complex country, with known intransigent allies like communists to boot. She has had her moment of glory, steering the decaying Congress party to a surprise win, and delivering the BJP its biggest upset to date. So why not just seal this crowning moment of her life and outsource the prime ministerial drudgery to a pliant underling. The beauty of this arrangement is that it also makes her look like a great sacrificer.

But sacrificer, she is not. She is only ducking the huge responsibilities that come with being the PM. How relieved she felt and looked when she emerged out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan with Dr. Manmohan Singh after handing over the papers to the president. She has "sacrificed" because she can "afford" to, not because she swears by some moralistic principle. A real renunciation would have meant declining the powerful position of the leader of Congress Parliamentary Party, president of the Congress Party and now the chairperson of the Coordination Committee of the United Progressive Alliance, all of which she has and would accept with elan. This is also for the first time that the Prime Minister is not the leader of the CPP but a nominee of the leader of that party. The actual person which will wield the levers of power will not be Dr. Manmohan Singh but Mrs.Gandhi, and you called this the great sacrifice of the Indian political history. Phew! (If the likeable doctor had declined the offer of Prime Ministership, now that would have qualified for a genuine sacrifice).

But the irony is that what the inexperienced Mrs. Gandhi has done is really good for the country. The country is now in "safe hands", to use her own words, with a brilliant technocrat now at the helm of affairs. Dr. Singh has a spotless record, and he is reckoned to be the most honest and upright person in the Congress party, and even the entire Indian political constellation, which is dominated by thugs, thieves and history sheeters. With his vast experience as a policy maker in various international financial institutions, Dr. Singh has the capability to guide the Indian economy in the globalization era, which he inaugurated in India 13 years ago as the finance minister under the former Prime Minister P.V Narasimha Rao.

The only "weakness" of our new Prime Minister is that he is less of a politician than an economist. In the days to come, he will need great political skills to deal with the pulls and pressures from difficult allies. Some of his best laid out plans may run into rough waters in the face of opposition from BJP, the most effective opposition party India has ever had, and from his own allies and conservative congressmen.

However, the ever-polite sardarji should not worry much; Mrs. Gandhi will manage all the political headache while he crunches numbers, provides good governance and delivers social justice to the populace. Talking of social justice, we hope that he will also give a thought to the development of NE, which he represents in the Rajya Sabha. That well as might turn out to be real test of his famed economic acuity.

And as for the media, it has a monumental task cut out. To regain its credibility, it should stop licking out of the hand of government PR managers, and do something original. The media has shamed itself when it got completely wrong in understanding the sentiments of the people at the grass roots level, for instance in erstwhile Chandrababu Naidu's Andhra Pradesh, which the NDA projected as the showpiece of shining India. The final embarrassment was the utter uselessness of the opinion and exit polls that news channels hawk as the ultimate truth. Was the media bought by the ruling party? Let's hope not.