Hostile milestone

The assessments are at odds but the bitterness is entirely mutual. On Sunday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared the completion of one y...

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 8216;8216;never before8217;8217; milestone in the life of the nation; he said the mood of the country is 8216;8216;diametrically opposite to that we saw last year8217;8217;. On Monday, the BJP-led NDA issued a 28-page report card titled 8216;A year of non-performance and misgovernance8217;, which accused the year-old UPA government of doing more damage to the polity 8216;8216;than any other government in independent India8217;s history, barring emergency8230;8217;8217; From the fevered pitch of the invective in the political exchange, it would seem like we8217;re back in the thick of a grueling and acrimonious electoral campaign already 8212; and it8217;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? It8217;s Bihar, of course, but it8217;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 leadership8217;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 8216;8216;an alternative to the politics of exclusion and majoritarianism8217;8217; is some kind of entitlement to a less accountable politics and governance. It has been a prolonged political impasse. Statesmanship lies in breaking it.