It is a telling comment on the Vajpayee government that of all the pledges contained in the National Agenda for Governance, it first chose to redeem the one on nuclear testing. It was the easiest promise to keep. Unlike the power ordinance or the urea price hike, the decision to go in for nuclear tests did not need the approval of the BJP's mercurial allies. Nor did it require tedious consultations with a moribund bureaucracy which has a penchant for causing confusion by weighing pros and cons endlessly.A handful of people in the BJP's inner circle gave the green signal and Pokharan II became a reality. Unfortunately, the rest of NAG is not as simple to implement. Good governance is hard business and as the Vajpayee government battles with the myriad problems of day-to-day administration, its NAG seems destined to meet the same fate as the Common Minimum Programme of the United Front and the election manifestos of previous Congress regimes.Let's take, for instance, the promise to create four new states- Uttaranchal, Vananchal, Chattisgarh and Delhi. As an election platform, it caught the imagination. But as an administrative decision, the government is running into so many roadblocks that it may be forced to put the issue on the backburner.The Samata Party has already served up a bill of Rs. 50,000 crore as compensation for taking away the resource-rich Vananchal area from Bihar. Similarly, Chattisgarh and Uttaranchal are economically unviable without heavy subsidies which a cash-strapped Centre will find hard to shell out. As for Delhi, full statehood would deprive the Centre of its control over the Capital's police force and land, thereby leading to tension between the two governments on these sensitive points.Another NAG item which appears fated to remain on paper, despite declarations to the contrary, is the pledge to give women 33 percent reservation in all elected bodies. The issue has been hanging fire for more than two years and Vajpayee himself is said to be a strong votary of the cause.But the Bill is bogged down in numerous controversies - caste, modalities, delimitation, etc. - and the government seems inclined to push it off again for fear of antagonising vested interests within its own coalition.It is ironic that the BJP is taking the easy way out of difficult decisions in the manner of successive Congress governments. Granted that the women's reservation issue, statehood, the power ordinance, the Prasar Bharati Bill and the urea price hike are fraught with political implications. A coalition government such as the present one obviously cannot steamroll its way through a Parliament in which it does not have an adequate majority. But even on developmental issues on which there is a unanimity of opinion, the government seems to be at sixes and sevens on where to begin.For instance, NAG promises ``education for all''. While HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi has been quick to fill the Indian Council for Historical Research with saffron historians and shell out funds for free femaleeducation, he has been inexplicably slow to tackle primary education which is fundamental to spreading literacy.The ``health for all'' pledge is also all but forgotten. In three months, there have been two major hospital strikes in the Capital but apart from Health Minister Dalit Ezhimalai sharing tears with patients at Safdarjung Hospital, the government does not have a concrete action plan to improve health care services in the country. A pointer to the government's attitude comes from India's failure to send a delegation to an important World Health Organisation meet in Geneva last month.Unfortunately, in the aftermath of Pokharan II, there seems to be little time for these vital issues. Forced to play on the back foot, the BJP is waking up to the enormity of the burden it so arrogantly took on in March. Its boastful rhetoric has given way to an apologist's whimper. The party which promised an ``able Prime Minister and stable government'' is now seeking refuge behind the ``vast problems facing thiscomplex country'' and offering few solutions. Its NAG seems doomed to be buried under the dust raised by Pokharan II.
