Common Minimum Government

There were dinner parties and expensive self-congratulatory advertisements in the newspapers this week to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance8217;s tenure...

There were dinner parties and expensive self-congratulatory advertisements in the newspapers this week to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance8217;s tenure in office. It could be their last anniversary, so we cannot grudge them a bit of fun, and personally, I consider it a good sign that the prime minister has fancy, sit-down dinner parties now instead of the grubby socialist buffets of yore. But, as a responsible political pundit, I consider it my duty to point out that for you, me and the aam aadmi there is little to celebrate.

They promised us a common minimum programme and that is what we got. Common minimum governance, common minimum economic reform, common minimum infrastructure, and common minimum improvement in public healthcare and education.

They even gave us a common minimum prime minister. Poor, poor Dr Manmohan Singh. My heart has gone out to him when I have watched him give speeches on the economy in which he sounded like a consultant to the government of India. We should do this and we should do that, he says, without noticing that he is the prime minister and does not need permission to do the things he suggests. But then, you and I know that he does. Towering above him like one of those giant technicolour cutouts they have in Chennai is the Boss Lady. She who gave him the job but never allowed him to follow his best instincts.

He tried on the nuclear deal. He said he was prepared to let his government fall rather than be forced by the commies to act against the interests of India, and look what happened. The Boss Lady had one of her little chats with the Marxists, who unfailingly work against India8217;s national interest, and decided that the survival of her government was more important than national interest so the prime minister was forced publicly to back down.

This has happened often in the past four years. The man who as finance minister began the process of opening up our economy and saved us from ending up as an international basket case has not been allowed to make one itsy-bitsy reform since he became prime minister. He would have liked to continue the privatisation the last government started. It might have saved our public sector oil companies from going bankrupt and taxpayers8217; money could have been spent on more important things than protecting the interests of a handful of workers.

His Marxist supporters forced him to stop all privatisation. No labour reform either, no insurance reform, no reform at all. Economic reform is only allowed in West Bengal because it is ruled by Marxists and in careful emulation of Chinese 8216;socialism8217; only ex-communists are allowed capitalistic reform.

So then why did he not concentrate on doing something else? A new education policy? Better public healthcare? As a government that claims it came to power to protect the aam aadmi, would it not have made sense to make dramatic changes that benefited him more than anyone else? Answer: on healthcare there were coalition constraints. And nothing could happen in education either because the prime minister was in no position to control his HRD minister when he put caste quotas at the top of the education agenda. He was more powerful than the prime minister because he is what the Congress calls a Gandhi family 8216;loyalist8217;. This means that he considers it his primary ministerial responsibility to sing the praises of the heir apparent. Rahul must be the prime minister, Rahul must be the prime minister, he says every chance he gets.

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Rahul baba, meanwhile, has been on a poverty safari. He spends nights in a Dalit hut and makes midnight visits to Adivasi villages without anyone understanding what exactly he is looking for. If he did not know what life is like below the poverty line, he has no business to be in politics and if he did know, then why does he mock the poorest of the poor by trying to live as they do? They would give anything to move out of their mud huts and live in a nice apartment with colour TV and proper furniture like you and I do. And, they would be even happier to move into Rahul Gandhi8217;s lovely bungalow in the best part of New Delhi.

What else can we expect from a government that aspires to the common minimum than a common minimum heir apparent? The one thing was can learn from the UPA exercise is that next time we get a coalition in Delhi that promises us a common minimum programme, we must reject it. In a country in which every problem is maximum strength we cannot afford minimum programmes.