Hostile milestone

The assessments are at odds but the bitterness is entirely mutual. On Sunday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the completion of one year of his government in office to be a ‘‘never before’’ milestone in the life of the nation; he said the mood of the country is ‘‘diametrically opposite to that we saw last year’’. On Monday, the BJP-led NDA issued a 28-page report card titled ‘A year of non-performance and misgovernance’, which accused the year-old UPA government of doing more damage to the polity ‘‘than any other government in independent India’s history, barring emergency…’’ From the fevered pitch of the invective in the political exchange, it would seem like we’re back in the thick of a grueling and acrimonious electoral campaign already — and it’s not the one that is scheduled to take off shortly in benighted Bihar.

By any yardstick, a year is not the most fair vantage point to look at a government, categorically. It is too short a time to pronounce it a success, or dead. Then why are we being treated to this deadly knockabout of extremist opinions, this dire tenor of political discourse? It’s Bihar, of course, but it’s not just Bihar. The acrimony between government and opposition was just sharpened by the midnight strike against the Bihar assembly but it predates it and the two report cards of the UPA government vividly frame this congealed reality. The antagonism between the lead political players must be pulled out of this new low, this sad absence of grace. There are crucial issues of national concern, including the troubled state of Bihar, that await the political leadership’s return to a saner pitch and tone. It may seem misplaced to say this as the hostilities rage afresh on Bihar, but we do deserve a more engaged and less alienating debate.

What will it take? For starters, some serious introspection by senior leaders in the NDA and UPA, on the wages of petulance and intolerance respectively. The NDA must finally reconcile with the fact that it does not run the government any more and the UPA must acknowledge the responsibility of using power with scruple and restraint. To get back to the report cards, if the NDA did not seek to lay the UPA government on the mat on all fronts, its critique of the government may have carried more serious weight. On the other hand, the UPA seems to suggest that its self-definition as ‘‘an alternative to the politics of exclusion and majoritarianism’’ is some kind of entitlement to a less accountable politics and governance. It has been a prolonged political impasse. Statesmanship lies in breaking it.