a no 1 if you were seen as americas friend the attitudes of many other important countries changed too on the other hand one of the key aspects of being no 1 is that you have to bang heads together not take the path of least resistance but consider the f aceof f between chidambaram as home minister and nandan nilekani responsible as he saw it for issuing a unique identity number to every resident of the country chidambaram argued that the enumeration had to be done by the census commissioner for creating a national population register and you could not have simultaneous registration by nilekanis unique identity authority nilekani argued that his registration was already happening in spades whereas the census commissioner was yet to get moving he went to singh seeking a way out singh simply asked him to sort it out bilaterally with chidambaram which was no help by the time a clumsy compromise was worked out aadhaar registration had virtually ground to a halt and it took months to regain momentum pc parakh the former coal secretary has recounted in his book crusader or conspirator that singh protected him when his minister levied unfounded charges and wanted him moved out of coal singh even agreed with parakhs proposal that coal mines for captive use should be auctioned not given free but he did not assert that position when sibu soren as minister resisted and eventually scuttled the idea thus setting the stage for a scandalous minegrab was singh better at playing defence protecting the civil servant under attack from a minister than at taking the offensive on policy reform perhaps the manner in which he resisted pressure from sonia gandhi to adopt a food security law that would have been unworkable in scope and disastrous for agriculture in effect reducing the grain needed for the programme by a half is little known and appreciated as for pushing his own agenda singh has said often that politics is the art of the possible the criticism would be that he did little to expand the range of possibilities more often than not he was willing to play along with whatever idea had political legs it is hard for instance to square his dphil thesis at oxford which argued against indias export pessimism with his serving in the commerce ministry as economic advisor in an environment where the hive of rules and restrictions reflected nothing as much as export pessimism more recently when a small group that he met in 2005 or 2006 pointed out that the employment guarantee law had serious fiscal implications he brushed it off saying it would be years before the programme was extended to all districts of the country yet in august 2007 he announced from the red fort that the programme would be extended to the whole country when the prized petroleum ministry was being taken away from a very upset mani shankar aiyar singh kept telling aiyar that he was