UPA's identity dilemma

The ruling alliance is sending out contradictory signals about where it stands on major issues of policy vis-a-vis the Hindutva Right and the Left; it must resolve its identity crisis and resolutely impart a progressive pro-poor direction to politics.

WHEN the Congress and its allies decided to coalesce together after the felicitous results of the Lok Sabha elections came in on May 13, it did not take them long to name the new grouping "United Progressive Alliance" (UPA). Nor was the name an accident or a casual appellation unrelated to the nature of the electorate's mandate against the elitist dualism of the National Democratic Alliance's economic policies, its political cynicism, and its pro-Hindutva bigotry. The word "progressive" was presumably meant to convey a definite, unambiguous orientation - as favouring "rapid social progress or reforms" through the Left-of-Centre policies that have come to be associated with the word.

This was not an unrealistic expectation. After all, the partisanship that the word "progressive" connotes in favour of the underprivileged majority of Indians, with a stress on equality, social justice, pluralism, secularism, and so on, and an independent policy orientation in world affairs, was reflected in the UPA's National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), which promised a major shift in the government's priority with greatly increased investment in the social sector, including an employment guarantee scheme, food security, and improved health care.

Some of this new emphasis on the poor, as well as the reaffirmation of non-alignment, a multi-polar global order, and India's "traditional" position in support of Palestinian nationhood was the result of the Left parties' discussions with UPA leaders even after they decided to keep out of the Alliance. But this too reflected a natural process in keeping with the election results, which gave the Left parties an unprecedented 60-plus Lok Sabha seats and made them indispensable to the UPA's survival.

It was perfectly legitimate for the Left to want to influence the UPA so that it survives, thus weakening the Hindutva forces, and that it adopts policies that favour the underprivileged - the Left's primary social constituency. It is a sign of wholesome politics that the Left seek influence openly and transparently, by espousing certain policies, and not through the back door and via behind-the-scenes intrigue.

However, the UPA has not lived up to the spirit of the NCMP or to the promise of a generally progressive policy orientation - certainly not fully. A good deal of the NCMP remains unimplemented. In place of the strong forward thrust pledged for the social sector, the Union Budget has only allotted an extra Rs.10,000 crores to it. This amounts to only 0.4 per cent of India's gross domestic product. But since the allocation is not Ministry- or head-specific, and because it comes well after most States finalised their expenditure plans for the current fiscal year, it is unlikely that even this sum will physically translate into actual spending.

On secularism, the NCMP promised to wage a battle against "all obscurantist and fundamentalist elements who seek to disturb social amity and peace". Yet, it has done little for the victims of the Gujarat violence - India's worst sufferers from communalism, obscurantism and fundamentalism. The UPA should know that about one lakh violence-affected people in Gujarat are still in need of relief (and many more of rehabilitation). It has failed to mobilise such relief, food, including shelter and special schools. Now has the UPA played the corrective role expected of it in the law-courts? Rather, it is the Supreme Court that has shifted some of the litigation (for instance, Best Bakery) from Gujarat to Maharashtra.

So the absence of any mention of Gujarat in the Prime Minister's first address to the nation, as the leader of the first secular government in New Delhi since the pogrom occurred, is proving more than a casual slip or elision. It does seem as if a good section of the UPA preferred a "non-confrontationist" and cooperative, or even accommodative policy towards the Hindutva forces. Some of the architects of the Congress's disastrous "soft-Hindutva" strategy in the Gujarat Assembly elections of 2002 are in positions of power in the central party organisation. And there is resistance to combatively opposing Hindu communalism and weeding out key personnel sympathetic to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) divisive and toxic agendas from positions in government committees and other influential bodies in areas such as culture, information and broadcasting and foreign and economic policy-making. (Frontline, August 27 and September 24)

Again, take the NCMP's promise of repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). Instead of doing so through a simple Bill after documenting the draconian nature of the law, the government has enacted an Ordinance which retains some of the most obnoxious provisions of POTA, including its definition of terrorism and terrorist organisations, the purely administrative designation of groups as terrorist, the admissibility of communication intercepts as evidence, and harsh punishment for supporting or financially aiding terrorist organisations (as MDMK leader Vaiko was accused of doing by making pro-LTTE speeches). This is a far cry from the Congress' and Left parties' campaign against POTA as an unacceptably drastic law incompatible with human rights.

In general, the Home Ministry's performance has been distressingly poor over Manipur and the rest of the northeastern region. It has shown complete passivity in correcting wrongs in the Ayodhya litigation process, including restoring the deleted charge of conspiracy against L.K. Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

The UPA appears to be dragging its feet over the NDA's numerous cases of malfeasance, including the Gujarat pogrom, the securities scams, the petrol pump allocation scandal, the Centaur hotel sell-off, the failure of intelligence and action over infiltration at Kargil, the "coffin scam", the Tehelka bribery-in-defence-deals scandal, and the Unit Trust meltdown, which wiped out over 50 million people's savings.

A similar imbalance is discernible in some foreign policy areas too. Although the NCMP said it would reiterate "India's decades-old commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people for a homeland", in practice, the UPA government has done very little to take up the Palestinian issue in international fora at this critical juncture in the destiny of the Palestinian people, when they face the prospect of the legitimisation of annexation of their territory by the major powers and its break-up into countless Bantustans. Sending a Minister of State (E. Ahamed) to meet Yasser Arafat does not amount to canvassing active support for the Palestinian cause. About the same time, the Indian Air Force chief was visiting Israel to conclude large arms-purchase deals and plan high-profile joint military exercises with that country.

On Iraq too, the UPA has shown a degree of ambiguity, although it has rightly ruled out the question of sending troops. For instance, on the issue of the illegality of the invasion (and occupation) of Iraq, Manmohan Singh minced his words. While meeting Tony Blair in London on September 20, he fudged the issue by saying it belongs to the past, and we should "look into the future". He also said India has offered to train Iraq's police. (His government is now helping out in Iraq's preparations for elections under occupation.) Of course, in a trivial, literal sense, the invasion is in the past. But the issue very much belongs to the present (and the future) insofar as legality and legitimacy is concerned, and its impact upon the United Nations system goes.

ONE can similarly go on listing other flaws, faux pas and inadequacies in the UPA's performance. But two specific instances, involving Manmohan Singh himself, stand out. The first pertains to his first full-fledged press conference, and the second, to his handling of the controversy over the appointment of representatives of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and private multinational consultancy firms to the 19 committees making a mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Five-Year Plan.

At the press conference, Singh said he is opposed to the "fundamentalism" of both the Left and the Right. The context for this was set by questions at the conference about the UPA government's attempt to reverse the "saffronisation" of education, and by the controversy over the removal of the Savarkar plaque from the Andamans jail.

However, it should be plain that the Left cannot even been remotely accused of distorting Indian history and corrupting and communalising education - and thus being equated with the Right, which has an overt saffron agenda in education and culture and a proven record of distorting textbooks, and so on. At the press conference, it was not the Right, but the Left that some questioners tried to put in to the dock. "Neutrality", in an asymmetrical and unequal situation, when the dice are loaded against one party, does not speak of fairness or balance.

Manmohan Singh also did his utmost to distance himself from the Savarkar controversy, and to give the impression of neutrality, fairness and inclusiveness. He attempted an apparently "even-handed" description of Savarkar's role in the freedom struggle. He did not deny Savarkar was a patriot, but expressed his ideological disagreement with his core beliefs. But this fell short of fully demarcating Savarkar, with his fatherhood of the Two-Nation-theory and of Hindutva, from the mainstream freedom movement, with its pluralist-secular values.

These inadequacies put into the shadow Manmohan Singh's criticism of fundamentalism of the Right and the Left. If "fundamentalism" connotes, as it should, ultra-orthodox dogma or fanatical belief in the infallibility of the scriptures, then the term is easy to understand in respect of the Right, not the Left. Right-wing fundamentalists are not hard to identity - religious bigots who believe in the exclusion of certain groups from the political community by virtue of their faith, ultra-conservatives dedicated to authoritarianism, and market fundamentalists of the neo-liberal variety. These tendencies represent a real and present danger in many parts of the world, including India. But the Left "fundamentalism" simply does not make sense in today's India. Even if the term is used (beyond its proper meaning) to connote Stalinist dogma, or quasi-religious belief in the "one-party state" or centralised planning and top-down control of economic activity, it hardly applies to the Indian Left, in particular the Communist parties, which have criticised and moved away from the legacy of Stalinism.

True, there are utterly marginal fringe-Left groups, which believe in the cult of violence. But while one can justifiably deplore them, it is inappropriate to use the term "fundamentalism". This equation too does not speak of balance.

Take the Plan review issue. The decision to appoint foreign consultants - a brainchild of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman - was opposed not just by the Left but others too, who question the first-hand acquaintance of many World Bank-Asian Development Bank economists with Indian realities, or consider it wrong to associate the nominees or employees of these institutions with an official review of the Plan and policy changes. This is a strong argument. The committees in question were not quite "consultative", but under their terms of reference had the "powers to co-opt/associate professionals/domain experts into the group. The group will also have the powers to set up sub-groups from Central and State governments as well as non-officials to finalise its views on specific issues".

There is no reason why a sovereign government should invite employees of foreign or Western-dominated institutions and banks official sub-committees, where such individuals' agenda should be presumed to be one of promoting their institutions' policies - irrespective of whether they are Indian nationals or foreigners.

Manmohan Singh could have easily resolved the controversy, made sharper by the decision of five economists to drop out of the committees in case the foreign "experts" are not removed. Instead, he dissolved all the 19 committees, whose rationale was valid, consisting as it did in transparent and open consultation with a broad range of 400-plus experts.

THIS raises a fundamental issue: which identity should the UPA choose for itself - a Left-leaning profile, a neutral one, or one which seeks "consensus" by trying to carry the BJP with it? If the UPA is serious about understanding its electoral mandate and about giving Indian politics a healthy direction, and if it really wants to provide authentic leadership, it must rule out the last two options. The third means becoming the BJP's "B-team" and the second is a non-option.

Only a Centre-Left programme, strongly focussed on equity, social justice, pluralism and a humane future for the majority of Indians, can infuse energy into our politics and help reform this society and take it forward. This will need not just a survival strategy but genuine leadership, with moral clarity and an unshakeable commitment to humane and liberal values. The UPA must choose, choose wisely, and choose quickly. It has failed to give a new direction to India in the past four and a half months. It has very little time to lose before the people get disenchanted with it - as they will, if does not correct course.