Opinion UPA’s fade out

The editorial in the latest issue of Organiser,titled “The UPA government is withering away” says: “The UPA government has already become a lame duck. That is the image it has been giving ever since the Mumbai terror attack on November 26,2008,but the interim budget it presented in the Lok Sabha on February 14,confirmed it. One cannot expect major policy initiatives in a vote-on-account. But the hype about tinkering with tax rates,fiscal concessions for industry to boost the economy,separate packages for job creation and populist bonanza for the common man was all the government’s own making. The pro-establishment media built up these high expectations deliberately,with sufficient material input from the Finance Ministry mandarins as if the government was in a mood of yet another budgetary splurge. Even seasoned economic writers — who should have known better that a vote-on-account is not the occasion to indulge in financial profligacy of a sort that would set a bad precedent — went to town suggesting and anticipating major booster bailout packages in Pranab Mukherjee’s and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s  pre-poll rhetorics. It all ended in a disappointment and all-round adverse reactions. Understandably,the UPA’s last budget exercise has failed to stimulate the common man,stir the Sensex or enthuse the industry.”

It adds: “So it was a pre-poll speech without a pre-poll campaign agenda. Perhaps,that is why many called it ‘zero-fizz budget count’. The UPA has proved a monumental failure on the economic front. It is more culpable for abdicating its duty since September 2008,when the world economic meltdown hit India. Ever since it has been behaving like a headless chicken. Because of the wrong policies the UPA pursued we are now discussing not the double-digit growth but how low the growth will be in the coming years. It was this fizzling out that the vote-on-account was all about. Though the CPM has withdrawn its support,as a Marxist,Prakash Karat must be happy that the UPA government is not going out but ‘withering away’.”

Security from the bottom up

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In an article titled ‘Time has come to define true secularism,freedom,’ MD Nalpat writes: “Fortunately for India,civil society is at last developing,and doing so strongly. (In Pakistan too) a strong civil society has emerged that on occasion can even challenge the closet jehadis who infest the Pakistan army. It was this new force that ensured the exposure of the local antecedents of Ajmal Kasab,the only surviving terrorist of 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai…. Today,just as more than a fourth of India has come under the control of Maoists,more than a third of Pakistan’s land area has come under the exclusive sway of Taliban-like groups… More than 40 million of Pakistan’s youth are being deprived of education and circumstances needed to ensure their adjustment to the international economy,thus ensuring a substantial flow of recruits into the numerous gangs that carry out terrorist activities. Why Mumbai? Because for the first time,foreign nationals were targetted,not simply Indians,thus making the incident too grave for the UPA chairperson to ignore.”

He adds: “India’s security hinges on two legs. The first is social cohesion,caused by the introduction of genuine secularism,which would ensure that all citizens be treated equally by the state,and not given a differential treatment,caused by ensuring of school curricula that ensure both pride and knowledge in the unique character of India,a country that belongs to each citizen,irrespective of religion,region or other societal differentiation. The other is economic development,caused by the lifting of barriers to initiative and enterprise that have been reinforced rather than removed during the Nehru era and most of its successors,especially the present lot. Caused by a tax system that is citizen-friendly,and which ensures that the combined outgo from both direct and indirect taxes does not exceed 50 per cent of income (at present,it is nearly 80 per cent).”

Compiled by Suman K Jha