Opinion Of Cabbages and Kings
Has the time come to admit that the experiment of India having a prime minister appointed by the high command has failed?
Has the time come to admit that the experiment of India having a prime minister appointed by the high command has failed? I think it has. And,unless Sonia Gandhi spends her convalescence mulling over this and finding a solution we are in for very bad times. The government may survive till 2014 but by then the economy will be in deepest recession and none of the vital reforms needed in healthcare,education and infrastructure will have taken place. It has become fashionable these days to talk about policy paralysis and the non-functioning of Parliament but what nobody seems prepared to discuss is why these things have happened.
In a parliamentary democracy,the most important institution,for obvious reasons,is that of the prime minister. And,ever since Dr Manmohan Singh began his second term in office,we have seen his authority whittled down to the point when junior ministers have disobeyed him publicly. So it should surprise us not one little bit that Mamata Banerjee so easily stymied the only economic reform that has been attempted since Atal Behari Vajpayees government fell. The people who would have benefited the most from the advent of companies like the Walmart are Indias poorest,most voiceless farmers. But,the Chief Minister of West Bengal,schooled in the stupidities of fake socialism,was not aware of this,so she put her foot down. The governments feeble attempt to impose its will collapsed. The Prime Minister was blamed.
As he has been for the disgracefully inept handling of Anna Hazares agitation,for corruption becoming the biggest political issue,for GDP growth rate dropping,for investors fleeing our shores and all the other bad things that are happening. But,is it really his fault? Or is it the fault of those who have conspired to diminish his job to that of a cypher? I believe we need to blame those who really are to blame and at the top of the list is Sonia Gandhis kitchen cabinet officially known as the National Advisory Council.
The gaggle of NGO-types who constitute the NAC have not been elected to govern this country but they have been allowed to. It is to them that we owe a series of misguided welfare schemes and laws. NREGA has now disrupted rural labour patterns so seriously that the agriculture minister appealed again last week for it to be suspended during harvest time. Instead of benefiting the jobless,it has worked to lure agricultural labour into jobs that pay better for less work. What is worse is that it has created more avenues
for corruption.
The Land Acquisition Bill,if passed,will complicate rather than resolve land acquisition problems and make it virtually impossible to set up a large factory anywhere in India. It imposes official controls on the purchase of more than a hundred acres by private buyers. And,if the NACs Food Security Bill goes through,we will need to import grain on a massive scale in order to distribute it free to nearly every Indian villager.
The Prime Minister should have spoken up against these madcap schemes but how can he defy his boss? When his ministers see that he cannot,why should they not defy him? They did not in his first term in office because the NAC was not powerful then. Nor was there any talk of Rahul Gandhi taking the Prime Ministers job whenever he decided it was time. Between the general election in the summer of 2009 and the Bihar election last winter,all we heard was talk of Rahul being more than ready to seize his inheritance. Important political magazines put him on their covers,and our news channels followed him frenetically wherever he went. The Prime Ministers role in governing this country was inevitably reduced.
So here we are. The economy,at this rate,could slow down by 2014 to the old Hindu rate of growth that kept India poor for decades. And,politically,the Government of India looks so timid and confused that any old person can come and bully it into doing the wrong thing. So it is time that our real prime minister,Sonia Gandhi,took urgent steps to rectify the things that have gone wrong. She needs to forbid her kitchen cabinet from making policy,and she needs to encourage her son and heir to either claim his inheritance or give it up for now. As things stand,we are led by a government that does not lead,take responsibility for decisions or allow itself to be held accountable for mistakes.
If we carry on this way till 2014,there is every chance that India will be as bankrupt once more as it was in 1991. By then the world would have moved on without us and the damage done will be permanent.
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh
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