Just oppose it

Former finance minister P. Chidam-baram8217;s statement to a television network opposing the peace accord at Maruti Udyog represents a new low in the manner in which opposition parties react to decisions taken by the government of the day. Chidambaram said curtailing R.S.S.L.N. Bhaskarudu8217;s tenure as Maruti8217;s managing director at Suzuki8217;s insistence was unfortunate and sent a wrong signal to the chief executives of all public sector units. True, Chidambaram is simply echoing his ally and former colleague Murasoli Maran8217;s view. But the former finance minister has been known to be a very strong advocate of shutting down chronically loss-making public sector units. He was also an ardent advocate of the government getting out of areas where it simply had no business to be in, such as running hotels or baking bread.

Never mind if they were profitable, he argued in the past, the government should not be in this business. Cars, surely, fall in this category. Chidambaram, of course, is not the only minister of theprevious United Front government to oppose policies that were pursued by them when they were in power. A whole host of former UF cabinet ministers have recently signed a petition asking the government to reconsider its decision to repeal the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act ULCRA. It doesn8217;t seem to matter to these worthies that it was the Cabinet under the Gujral government which first passed the proposal to repeal ULCRA. Among the former ministers who have signed the petition are Jayanthi Natarajan, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. This despicable politics of negation is not confined to just those in the opposition today. The BJP went to town criticising the Gujral regime for allowing the rupee to fall to levels below what they felt was acceptable. At that time, allowing the rupee to weaken was seen as an IMF-World Bank plot, tantamount to allowing the economy to weaken. But once the BJP came to power, it did little to prevent the rupee from falling. It has touched an all-time low of 42 tothe dollar, but not a murmur from the BJP. Over the past year, The Indian Express has been a firm advocate of a policy which allows the rupee to depreciate to realistic levels. But that is not the point. The BJP was simply opportunistic then, just as the opposition is today. Under normal circumstances, this cheap opportunism would not really matter. After all, this is what most opposition parties do, never mind that this mindless opposition serves no one in particular. The problem comes when the government of the day is a weak one, unable to stick to most of its decisions. So, at the slightest hint of the opposition flexing its muscles, or threatening to make the issue an electoral one, it just backtracks. With so much of this happening over the past ten days, this government has come to be known as one of roll-backs, just as Rajiv Gandhi8217;s came to be epitomised by kickbacks. It is regrettable that this country has not had a strong government for such a long time.