New Delhi: Over 1,800 respondents from 18 states were asked to rate the performance of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
As many as 56 per cent of the people interviewed by Centre for Study of Developing Society for CNN-IBN-The Indian Express opinion poll felt that the Prime Minister performed satisfactorily over the last two years.
Manmohan Singh has pulled off a first division, an impressive 68 per cent. He scores for his honesty (64 per cent) and wisdom (61 per cent), but opinion is divided on whether he is a strong leader or not.
In fact, only one in every three persons thought that his policies are pro-poor, a startling fact for a government that fought the elections on the aam admi's vote.
This was the finding of a survey that CNN-IBN-Indian Express carried out in July on the eve of completion of two years of the UPA government in office.
In the survey while it was thumbs up for Manmohan Singh, he also emerged second to Sonia Gandhi as a choice for the Prime Minister. Surprisingly, he beat all other Congress leaders to the post.
What's even more surprising was that one out of every two who had voted for the NDA in 2004 have given their approval for the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister's report card has four prominent red marks: the reservations issue where only 28 per cent was with him, on farmers' suicide and terrorism, only 22 per cent thought the PM did well while on the issue of price rise, most thought he had failed.
But does Manmohan Singh take independent decisions? Less then 10 per cent said 'yes'.
A majority of the people didn't really have a clue about who's calling the shots, while over 40 per cent were of the opinion that Sonia Gandhi is the real decision-makers.
Almost half of them failed to decide if Sonia's role was positive or not and there were twice as many people who thought that Sonia should intervene and even lesser number felt she shouldn't intrevene.
That may explain why 52 per cent of the people felt that Sonia should replace Manmohan Singh. This figure was even higher among Congress voters.
But when asked if Rahul Gandhi was an option, only 31 per cent agreed and the denial was vehement when it was proposed that the Prime Minister should be replaced by another Congressman.
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