Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is in an unenviable position.

He has spent seven years safe in the knowledge that everybody knows he is not his own man. He has remained largely a spectator as his party president has run a super cabinet of sorts and many of his cabinet colleagues their independent fiefdoms. His first term was remarkable for his singular assertion on the India-US civil nuclear deal as much as India’s spectacular economic growth at a time when the rest of the emerging economies were also booming. He got away with his government’s failure to fast-track economic reforms simply because he had a ready excuse in the opposition of the Left Front which supported his government from the outside for the first four years. Minus the support of the Left Front and the global economic boom, and coupled with the mega scams that have rocked his government, his regime’s equally glacial haste in economic reforms and its continued inability to rein in runaway inflation have come into sharper focus in his second term.

As public anger on corruption crystallised in the shape of support to civil society protests, the dissensions within his party and government added up to create a perception of serious drift. The shocking crackdown on the peaceful protesters in the dead of night at Ramlila Maidan happened in this backdrop. And not long thereafter came the call for the Nehru-Gandhi scion’s elevation to the post of prime minister. The explanations and clarifications for all such developments notwithstanding, the prime minister no longer seems to be able to shield the first family and his party from the fury of the electorate. His image-makeover drive which began with his meeting with five editors on Wednesday has to be seen in this perspective. It appears to be his party’s belated bid to limit the damage to the prime minister who is neither directly elected nor a likely candidate for the next election.

Of course, it is in everybody’s interest that the prime minister engages more often with the citizens he represents through the media. Nothing else can give such a palpable feeling of having somebody in charge. The danger, though, is that it also takes away the benefit of doubt that anyone may have had. It is possible to bridge a communication gap through communication, but not a performance deficit through mere, even if regular, exchange of words.

Which brings us to the substance of the prime minister’s first meeting. He is reported to have said that he is ready to be under the ambit of Lokpal but he added that his cabinet colleagues believe this will create instability and the final decision will be taken by his cabinet colleagues. He also defended the police action on Baba Ramdev’s peaceful supporters and he accused the media of having turned “accuser, prosecutor and judge”. He dismissed his characterisation as “lame duck” prime minister as a “clever propaganda by the opposition”. And, of course, he reiterated that a cabinet reshuffle would happen soon and also that he expected inflation to come down.

Is this the stuff image-makeovers are scripted with?