Opinion Press conference blues
One year on,UPA-II hasnt kept even its 100-day promises...
We dont have anything like a State of the Union address. There is the prime ministers Independence Day address from the Red Fort,but it is not the same. We are one year into UPA-II and for any government wishing to deliver,it is the first year that matters. It was no different for UPA-I. Goaded by NAC-I (National Advisory Council),UPA-I delivered the RTI and the NREGS in its first year (six months actually) and there was little of note thereafter. Perhaps because it is actually the sixth year,or perhaps because NAC-II has not quite been constituted yet,there has been nothing significant,beyond Womens Reservation and Right to Education. With the Left out of the way,with no NCMP (National Common Minimum Programme) acting as a constraint,with an imploding opposition and with a relatively large mandate in favour of the Congress,the Congress leadership probably expected a big bang in reforms. Big,small and even bang are subjective terms. Pro-market reformers will probably not classify anything as big or bang unless pension,insurance,banking,labour laws and FDI in retail are thrown in. There was no question of this happening. The so-called inclusive agenda means a swing to the left. And if that inclusive agenda is voted back in,with a large mandate,why should one rock the boat?
Until the global financial crisis,the economy was chugging along at around 8.8 per cent. People seemed happy. Why bother? The merits of this hypothesis and counterfactual possibilities of higher growth with reforms are irrelevant. What is relevant is the Congress leadership wanted a big bang too,though that big bang was cloaked under the inclusive agenda. After five years of experience with UPA-I,there seemed to be an agenda of what the Congress thought was politically and economically desirable and this was bunged into the Presidents Address to Parliament on June 4,2009. This was the new NCMP. True,reforms dont get done in one year. There are four more years to go,though empirically,ennui,political compulsions and pandering to status quo set in from the third year. But the country didnt necessarily want reforms to be accomplished in a single year. It was UPA-II that promised manna from heaven in the first 100 days. Accordingly,a paragraph 32 was thrown into the Presidents Address,to the effect that,My Government will initiate steps within the next hundred days on the following measures. Once a promise about this version of the big bang had been made,the country was entitled to ask that the promise be kept. After all,on more than one occasion (August 15,2004; May 19,2009),the PM has said there are no new promises to be made. But there are promises to be kept.
Item by item,one can go down that list in paragraph 32 to check which promises for the first 100 days have been kept. By my count,25 promises were made and by my count 4 have been met (Womens Reservation Bill,50 per cent reservation in panchayats and urban local bodies,roadmap for judicial reform,Delivery Monitoring Unit). Four out of 25 is 16 per cent,1.6 out of 10. In a similar press conference during UPA-I,the PM rated his government 6/10. This time,he refused to do so. And the reasons are understandable. 1.6/10 is not something one wishes to go public on. Beyond paragraph 32,ministries and government departments were supposed to issue 100-day plans. Few did.
And of the articulated 100-day plans,few survived. The law ministry produced a roadmap,but the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill and National Litigation Policy remain elusive. The HRD ministry struggles with bits and pieces of the educational jigsaw. We havent managed to produce 20 km of roads a day. The only reform on track is the finance ministrys fiscal consolidation (subject to supplementary demands for grants) and direct and indirect tax reform (slated for 2011).
Instead,there has been public bickering by ministers. Most ministers want other portfolios. There has been non-accountability of ministers and not just among allies like TMC and DMK. Had it been a question of allies alone,one would have understood. Had it been legislative business alone,one would have understood the impasse,though one would have wondered whether it was worthwhile frittering away limited political capital on the nuclear liability bill alone. There are several reforms that can be accomplished through the executive mode alone and these too have stagnated. The future NAC-IIs darling,right to food,has got stuck because of the IPL,meaning the intermittent poverty line and not the other IPL. If you were the PM,you too would feel frustrated. An international magazine described him as a man in office,but not in power. Paradoxically,this seems to be more true of UPA-II than UPA-I,despite the electoral mandate in favour of Manmohan Singh as an individual and the progressive whittling down of opposition within Congress to the PM. The uncharitable will call UPA an unproductive asset and the charitable will call it an under-performing alliance.
Since anniversary celebrations have been cancelled,why decide to have a press conference? Was it to counter the impression of drift,to convey a sense of vision and energy? If that was the objective and this was meant to be a State of the Union kind of address,limited to the media,it hasnt worked. Apart from anything else,this doesnt suit the persona of the individual concerned. Each question must have been anticipated several times and each answer rehearsed many more times,including that on telecom auctions. Barring the faux pas about a population of 1 billion US dollars,the PM handled questions extremely competently,without provoking controversy,without logorrhoea so characteristic of some of his cabinet colleagues,without saying anything significant and without revealing much. Judged in those limited terms,the press conference was a success. It didnt convey vision and energy. So one goes back to the question. Why have the press conference? If you were the PM,you would also sometimes desire that wishes were horses. DMK,TMC and NCP are bad enough,BSP,SP,RJD and JMM will be worse. It is far better to have quid pro quo discussions with the Left. If only the Left had the 2004 numbers and if only there hadnt been this drift towards the US. Then UPA-II would truly ride,with the inclusive agenda
enunciated in a new NCMP.
The writer is a Delhi-based economist
express@expressindia.com
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