Just blinking, or on the blink?

When scores of foreign investors fly into the country tomorrow for the annual World Economic Forum WEF, chances are that they won't be too...

When scores of foreign investors fly into the country tomorrow for the annual World Economic Forum WEF, chances are that they won8217;t be too focused on the spate of reforms unleashed by Prime Minister Vajpayee in the past few months. Nor is it likely that they will, much to the chagrin of many, spend much time congratulating the government for opening up the internet and insurance sectors to foreign players, or the fact that this government seems more serious than its predecessors in dealing with the chronically bleeding public sector.

What they are likely to spend a lot of time in discussing, at least in the all-important informal meetings they have with their counterparts, is the likely impact of the assembly elections. On whether the government will fall, or whether, as is more likely, it will just get weaker, and more susceptible to pressures. In other words, they will speculate on whether any meaningful governance will be possible with this government, which has already achieved a record of sorts inblinking first in the face of any pressure, whether from its allies or special interest groups in the economy.

In the past few months, for example, the government has been preoccupied with coming up with packages aimed at reviving specific sectors of the economy like cement and steel, through greater spending and reduced taxes. With the fiscal deficit under great strain, surely this is avoidable? More so, when the experience of the last fifty years has shown that giving bailouts 8212; the government also wants financial institutions to go soft on defaulting corporates in specific sectors 8212; just encourages firms to remain bloated and inefficient. Pressure from various industrial houses has also ensured that, despite a Cabinet decision on the matter, the government has still not been able to finalise its stance on what to do with telecom companies which continue to default on paying their license fees.

What is, of course, far more frightening is the fact that, even after being in the saddle for over eightmonths, the BJP still doesn8217;t appear to have bested the system. During the onion crisis, for example, the crux of the problem, and the public8217;s anger, was not so much due to the fact that prices had sky-rocketed following the crop damage. It was the fact that the government8217;s handling of the situation had been quite inept.

The fact is, and this is what the Congress exploited, that it took the government more than a month to wake up to the situation as a result, the matter kept getting pushed between the food, agriculture and commerce ministries, and precious time was lost before onions were put on the freely importable list.

While the BJP sought to pass the buck by blaming the Congress-controlled NAFED for not importing onions fast enough, few bought the argument. Maybe there8217;s some truth in the NAFED argument, but effective governance isn8217;t about excuses, it8217;s about solutions. In any case, with more items being decontrolled and subsidies declining, this sort of situation is likely to recur if thegovernment is not fully alert and able to come up with quick solutions each time, it will come a cropper. The fact that it takes a Mamata Bannerji to force the BJP to call a meeting of chief ministers to discuss the price situation is, surely, a poor indicator of the government8217;s functioning.

And right through the crisis, when enough reports showed that hoarders were having a field day, the government failed to act in any serious fashion. Whether this was because of its inexperience, or had something to do with the fact that the BJP has a strong trader base, is unclear. It8217;s impossible to prove it, but a few well-targetted and well-publicised raids are almost certain to have done wonders to the BJP8217;s image, and to onion prices.

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Of course, what takes the cake is the handling of the case of Romesh Sharma, Dawood Ibrahim8217;s alleged aide. Here was a god-sent opportunity for the BJP to score heavily. An alleged mafia don, with links with terrorists threatening to blow up the country; a man who has acknowledgedconnections with top politicians including some ex-prime ministers, top bureaucrats and top police officials.

The fact that many of these politicians were from opposition parties only made it sweeter. So, what does the BJP government allow the investigating authorities to do? Instead of forcing the pace of the investigation into the politician-bureaucrat-policeman angle, it allows itself to get hijacked by corporate and bureaucratic interests, and raids the residences of the Ambanis, India8217;s top corporates, on the flimsy and ridiculous apart from being unrelated charge of violation of the Official Secrets Act!

The fact that, over the last few days, both the Home Minister and the Prime Minister have gone on the record to say that nothing incriminating was found to link the Ambanis to Sharma, or that the documents found with the Ambanis weren8217;t exactly earth-shattering secrets, makes the government look quite foolish. Incidentally, this newspaper is the only one in the country which criticised thegovernment editorially for precisely this reason on the day of the raids 8212; for allowing itself to be misled, to bark up the wrong tree.

Of course, with the Congress still in disarray, and the other parties still not sure whether it makes sense to go with them, the BJP still has breathing time. The question, of course, for the delegates to the WEF and other investors, is what it chooses to do with it.