The government is drifting on numerous issues ranging from economic to foreign and security policy, and from handling of terrorism to the right to information.
WHEN the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was trounced in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the Indian nation rejoiced. The victory of the parties that came to form the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was founded upon a secular platform that emphasised equity and inclusiveness, as well as correction to other conservative or right-leaning policies that characterised the NDA.
Both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh explicitly acknowledged this. The UPA's National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) too reflected a broad Left-of-Centre orientation. The beginning of UPA rule kindled many hopes of a change for the better, especially after the long, dark night of the Gujarat carnage.
A little more than two years on, many of these hopes lie shattered. The Government seems to be losing purpose and direction. And the public is fast losing faith in the will or ability of the UPA to deliver on its promises. "Negative" factors behind the UPA's survival in power, including the bankruptcy and the grave organisational-political crisis of the Bharatiya Janata Party, have become as important as "positive" ones such as the overall quality of its governance, or its shaky, half-hearted attempts to bridge social divides.
At this rate, the UPA itself could soon start unravelling - unless it honestly recognises the depth of its growing crisis of credibility and urgently takes corrective measures. Consider its record on five issues - reaffirmation of secularism and pluralism; economic policy and performance; conduct of foreign and security policies; commitment to transparency and the Right to Information (RTI) Act; and its (poor) defence of the livelihoods and fundamental rights of underprivileged people.
On secularism, the UPA had a unique chance to restore the public's faith by earnestly healing the wounds left by recent ravages against the minorities, and by energetically promoting pluralism and constitutional values. In particular, it could have initiated moves to bring those guilty of the Gujarat pogrom to justice, taken affirmative action in favour of education for the minorities, and improved their representation in official bodies.
The UPA, by and large, failed to do this - except in respect of school textbooks which the National Council for Educational Research and Training commendably reviewed and rewrote. In his first few addresses to the nation and other public speeches, Manmohan Singh fought shy of even mentioning Gujarat, leave alone its singular character as the site of modern India's worst state-sponsored pogrom of a religious minority.
The government did appoint the Sachar Committee to inquire into the status of Muslims, but let it down when it came under flak over documenting low Muslim recruitment in the armed forces.
More important, the UPA has succumbed to hardline and communal pressures from its own functionaries in its handling of investigations into numerous terrorist attacks.
Like the NDA, it has typically tended to blame or cast suspicion on Muslims and allowed the police to harass them. This is especially true of the gruesome July 11 bombings in Mumbai.
More than 1,000 Muslims were rudely woken, rounded up and detained for long hours at police stations - without an iota of credible evidence of their involvement in the attacks.
Just when hard evidence was needed, the National Security establishment chose to plant all manner of speculative stories about "links" between Pakistani agencies and local "cells", between the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and Abdul Karim "Tunda", and so on. (The "Tunda" story soon turned out to be a complete red herring.)
The establishment's irresponsible conduct and police excesses have together created fear and insecurity among vulnerable minority groups all over the country, which the UPA leadership has done little to address effectively.
On the economy, the UPA promised equitable growth, with an emphasis on employment, food security, and redressing agricultural distress and regional disparities. Barring the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act - which was itself whittled down in scope and reach - it has delivered little despite rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the last two years.
The UPA is obsessively pursuing neoliberal policies that are scarcely distinguishable, except in respect of wholesale public sector privatisation, from the NDA's orientation. It has left macroeconomic parameters and fiscal ratios unchanged and failed to promote inclusive growth. On reviving agriculture, which should have been its top priority, the UPA has proved bankrupt. It sold off 7 lakh tonnes of grain - and is now importing millions of tonnes of wheat at prices higher than those paid to Indian farmers. It has allowed private oligopolies to grow in grain trade.
Worse, overzealous free-marketeers like Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia have been allowed a free reign. Ahluwalia unethically rewrote the Approach Paper to the Eleventh Plan after it was adopted by the Planning Commission.
He put his own neoliberal spin on it, and substantively revised critical sections, including those pertaining to financial sector liberalisation, drastic labour law amendments, foreign direct investment in retail trade, special economic zones, and capital account convertibility.
Going by the Approach Paper, the Eleventh Plan will be based on untenable and flawed assumptions about savings, investment and employment - a recipe for greater inequality, reduced food security and a tighter squeeze on the poor.
On foreign and security policy, the UPA's record is positively embarrassing, as this Column has repeatedly argued. It has undermined India's policy independence, closely aligned India with the United States and embraced Washington's worldview on the global balance of power, international institutions, and use of force to reshape critical regions (for example, West Asia) in line with U.S. priorities.
Through the nuclear cooperation deal and other moves, the UPA is undermining its own agenda - and the NCMP's promises - for a balanced foreign policy, greater engagement with powers other than the U.S., and fighting for a multipolar order to which the goal of nuclear disarmament would be crucial.
The deal will legitimise all nuclear weapons, including those of the U.S., promote an inappropriate and unsustainable energy path, and set back the global peace agenda.
India's relations with its neighbours remain troubled. The UPA has repeatedly vacillated and often followed the U.S. lead on Nepal. It has failed to engage Bangladesh. And it has allowed the peace process with Pakistan to be jeopardised - without firm evidence of Islamabad's involvement in terrorist incidents in India.
It has wantonly squandered opportunities to settle long-festering disputes such as Siachen and Sir Creek. Manmohan Singh has failed to provide a political lead to the dialogue process.
The UPA's retreat on the Right to Information issue is nothing short of ignominious. Particularly deplorable is its latest amendment exempting "file notings" from the Act's purview, which will rob the law of its life-blood. Manmohan Singh is factually wrong to claim that most countries similarly exempt file notings. This is not true of much of Western Europe. In any case, perpetuating secrecy and opacity in the working of a bureaucracy that inherits colonial practices of governance based on exclusion of the people is simply unconscionable.
No less dishonourable are the UPA's policies on land, displacement and rehabilitation of victims of large projects based on a perverse trade-off between costs to the underprivileged and benefits for a tiny elite. Its handling of the Narmada issue - in manifest violation of the Narmada Tribunal's award, and the recommendations of its own Group of Ministers - is a crying shame.
However, even worse is the UPA's complicity in what can only be called the Great Land Grab - appropriation of poor people's lands for the creation of Special Economic Zones, shopping malls and recreation projects favouring the rich. The entire Urban Renewal Mission is based on flawed assumptions and will uproot millions of poor people from city centres without rehousing them.
The UPA has beaten an ignominious retreat on public health and improving people's access to health care. The setting up of the Public Health Foundation, with the collaboration of universities from the U.S. - with the First World's worst record of health care access - is an irrational and unethical diversion from the urgent task of reviving India's crumbling Primary Health Centres. On food insecurity and the dismantling of the public distribution system, the less said the better.
The UPA is courting public anger and discontent through its policies and programmes.
Unless it corrects course with bold pro-people measures, it will be sent packing by the people. The writing is on the wall. Does the UPA want to see it?
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