AFTER a decade at 7, Race Course Road, the prime minister’s residence in Delhi, Manmohan Singh retires this month to a Lutyens bungalow nearby. It seems almost cruel that India’s mild leader, an economist by training, should attract so much personal venom. Even former supporters call him, variously, ham-handed, withdrawn, a wimp and a babu (a bureaucrat promoted beyond his abilities). Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his probable successor, mocks the legacy of the “economist prime minister” as high inflation and slowing growth.

A prolonged general election helps to explain some of the lack of grace. The seventh of nine voting phases took place across 89 constituencies on April 30th, as temperatures rose and tempers frayed. Rival politicians now routinely swap insults: “rats”, “butcher”, “Pakistani agent”, and “a devil” have all proved popular in recent days. Mr Singh keeps a characteristic silence, but is an inevitable target for the BJP.

The most spiteful critics, though, come from his own party. Congress expects a heavy defeat when national election results are broadcast on May 16th. It needs a scapegoat. The blame game began last month with a tell-all biography by a former spokesman, Sanjaya Baru. Supposedly, this is a defence of a man whom the author saw as a father figure. If so, who needs enemies? The book’s thrust is that the prime minister abdicated power to Sonia Gandhi, matriarch of the family that has the Congress party at its beck and call. That much is familiar. But it is the details that damn. The book chronicles a leader who is unassertive in cabinet, nearly powerless in hiring or firing ministers in a broad coalition and passive to a fault before colleagues’ disdain. Mr Singh never learned to communicate, giving just three full press conferences in ten years. His wife is quoted as saying that he “swallows everything, doesn’t spit anything out”.

Mr Singh is certainly responsible for some of the problems of government, and therefore for Congress’s abysmal standing. Take disgust over corruption, perhaps the most salient charge against the party. The prime minister’s personal honesty is not in doubt. But he refused to confront corrupt underlings. He could also have threatened to resign to force better behaviour from others. A colleague says the thought “never crossed his mind”.

That said, Mr Singh is not the only one to blame. Calling him only nominally in charge, and stuck with a “politically fatal combination of responsibility without power” (as the book puts it), shifts much of the fault onto Mrs Gandhi.

But perhaps a more vigorous defence of the prime minister can be made by examining the things he did achieve. One who works with him marvels at his “sheer lack of pomp”, and implies his longevity in office is proof of political skill. He stayed on because he liked it, including early-morning strolls in the huge, shady gardens of Race Course Road. True, his length in office may have bred a certain smugness—his decade in office rivals Indira Gandhi’s long rule. But there was a quiet zeal for economic reform—sometimes too quiet. He made a sustained case for the benefits of markets as few others have done—certainly not Mrs Gandhi nor, yet, Mr Modi. And as finance minister in the 1990s, he oversaw reforms that kick-started growth and changed global perceptions about India’s potential. A spokesman says that Mr Singh’s biggest regrets are wonkish ones: not passing two big tax reforms and not opening insurance to foreign investors.

His economic record is mixed-to-good, though in the current gloom—growth stuck below 5%—that assessment meets with raspberries. On his watch India’s economy more than doubled in size, as growth averaged over 8% until two years ago. The World Bank on April 29th ranked India’s economy as the world’s third-largest, replacing Japan’s (using purchasing-power parities). Elsewhere, a civil-nuclear deal with America brought benefits, notably imported uranium. And he had the grit to reduce huge subsidies on petrol and diesel, angering urban voters and politically well-connected lorry bosses.

Song sung, Singh

Left-leaning economists such as a Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, in Delhi this week, chide him for failing to trumpet “successes for which he rarely gets credit”, listing poverty reduction, rural jobs and food schemes, polio eradication and the taming of a once-terrifying AIDS epidemic. Overseeing stable relations with Pakistan, despite severe provocations in the form of terrorist attacks, is another Singh success.

For the moment, Mr Singh’s failures are more in evidence. Too few jobs were created, with no effort made to ease labour laws. Inflation has remained painfully over 8% for more than two years—pricey onions lose votes. At the root of India’s inflation was a gaping budget deficit which the prime minister failed to tackle. That gave the financial markets jitters too, sending the currency down. When the then finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee (now president), attacked investors with retrospective taxes in his 2012 budget, the prime minister stayed quiet. Mr Singh’s record is especially poor in implementing policy, and reforming dysfunctional departments. Popular frustration at his lack of a strong hand is an overwhelming reason for the enthusiasm for Mr Modi.

In January Mr Singh predicted history would judge him more kindly, and perhaps it will. Among his fellow Sikhs that is already true. In Amritsar, his former home, Congress blocked him from campaigning, and his photo is a small afterthought on party banners. Yet ordinary voters praise him. Daljit Singh Pappu, a motorcycle repair man, says that with “intelligent” Mr Singh as prime minister “our turban was held high”. Two ink-stained workers in an ancient printers’ shop grumble about inflation, but say Mr Singh was decent and “tried his best”. As India’s first non-Hindu prime minister, he embodied a national tradition of tolerance and inclusion. His successor is likely to prove more dynamic—and more divisive.