Common political agenda: Support when in power, slam when in Opposition

The farm laws, Aadhaar, DBT and GST are just a few instances of political parties in the Opposition taking a contrarian stance on issues they supported when in power

Those protesting against the three controversial farm laws showed videos of the late Arun Jaitley and the late Sushma Swaraj expressing the fear, in Parliament, of multinationals directly buying produce from farmers and impoverishing them. The two leaders were in the Opposition then and the debate was on whether or not to allow foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail.

In the present situation, when the BJP-led alliance in power is defending its three farm laws, the opposition is flaying them, including the one on contract farming.

Take another instance. The erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government's agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had asked chief ministers to amend the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act in their states to allow the private sector to play an important role in the field.

"This requires huge investments in marketing infrastructure, including cold chain. And for this, private sector participation is essential, for which an appropriate regulatory and policy environment needs to be in place," his letter had said.

After government sources talked about the letter, Pawar did admit he had sought changes in the APMC Act and pitched for allowing the entry of the private sector in the field. But he denied ever favouring scrapping of the law.

The trend of political parties taking an opportunistic stance when in the Opposition, but supporting the very issues they shunned when they come to power is not new.

FDI in insurance: Former finance minister in the Vajpayee government Yashwant Sinha tabled the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, 1999, to set up a regulatory body for the sector and open it up to private and foreign investors. The Bill was later enacted and the private sector was allowed entry with a cap on foreign direct investment at 26 per cent.

However, years later in December 2011, the Parliament's standing committee on finance headed by Sinha, submitted a report recommending that the FDI limit in insurance should not be raised to 49 per cent.

It was also an irony that the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2015, which raised the composite foreign investment limit from 26 per cent to 49 per cent was tabled by the NDA government and enacted. This came after successive governments tried to raise the FDI ceiling, but failed to get it cleared by both Houses in Parliament.

When asked why political parties, when they are in Opposition, take exception to the very issues they supported while in power, BJP national spokesperson and head of the party's economic affairs Gopal Krishna Agarwal, said,"I agree that this problem exists. The thing is that somewhere after independence, people in the leadership were inclined to the Left. They started glorifying poverty. Like crony capitalism, there is crony socialism. In crony socialism you bash every businessman and private investor. We are also sometimes influenced by them. But Modi ji tried to break that."

Senior Congress leaders refused to comment.

Aadhaar: Now take the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Bill. When in the Opposition, the BJP had called Aadhaar a fraud scheme. In fact, the party did not allow the UPA legislation to be passed in Parliament.

In 2012, BJP’s national spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi had opposed Aadhaar as a “fraud” programme and demanded a probe. “This is a dangerous programme to regularise the illegal stay of migrants in the country. Is Bharat Mata so open to illegal migrants? The Aadhaar is also in contravention of Supreme Court directives. The entire biometric data of people enrolled has been stored outside the country,” Lekhi had said.

Late BJP leader Ananth Kumar had said that Aadhaar’s contribution was to provide citizenship to illegal immigrants. “If you illegally enter other countries, you are shot or put in jail. But if anyone illegally enters India, he is given citizenship. This is the contribution of Aadhaar. Half of Assam is occupied by Bangladeshis. Aadhaar is the biggest fraud in the country,” Ananth Kumar said.

However, after coming to power, the NDA government brought an amended Aadhaar bill as a money bill to avoid Rajya Sabha’s veto where the Opposition is in majority. It tried to make the Aadhaar card the sole identify of a person in future.

“A stage may come that the unique identity will become the only card,” Jaitley had said, replying to the debate on the finance bill.

Direct Benefit Transfer: Now take direct cash transfer of subsidy into bank accounts of beneficiaries. In 2012, then BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said they will expose the government on its scheme of cash transfer aimed at "befooling" people in the Parliament.

"Cash transfer is not a game-changer. It is a game being played with poor people," Javadekar had said. "It is an attempt by the government to fool people before elections," he added.

Now in power since 2014, the BJP-led government is increasingly relying on direct benefit transfers to give subsidy amounts to beneficiaries.

GST: Let us see what happened in case of the goods and services tax (GST). The UPA tried to bring in GST after successfully convincing the states to go for value added tax (VAT) in their areas. However, BJP continuously opposed it.

In 2011, then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi had said GST in this present form disregards federal structure and takes away tax collection rights from the state and this is his opposition.

When the NDA government celebrated one year of the GST roll out in 2018, former finance minister P Chidambaram had attacked the NDA government, saying “If GST is a ‘victory of integrity’ and ‘celebration of honesty’, why did the BJP oppose it and stall it for five years?"

However, senior BJP leader Sushil Modi came in defence of BJP, saying,""It is Chidambaram who is responsible for not bringing the GST in time. The UPA lost states' confidence as it refused to give the compensation package it had earlier announced for the CST (central sales tax) losses," Sushil Modi had said.

Agarwal said after 1991 reforms, there were no major reforms except the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and GST, and the current agriculture and labour reforms.

He said benefits from economic reforms come with a time lag, but they benefit larger sections of the society. " However, there is immediate adverse fall out on some stakeholders as you see in Punjab and Haryana. Naturally, there will be some impact as there is the APMC Act and mandis are well established. So, they become very vocal. Adverse impact is immediate and on particular sections."

He said nobody is now discussing labour reforms. When they get notified on April 1, there will be huge hue and cry, he apprehended.

"If we see historically, every political party has a change of thought. But BJP basically believes in a market-oriented economy. With the level of corruption in the country, the market is the only way which can allocate resources efficiently. We are more right to the Centre than the Congress and we believe in efficient markets, private investments," he elucidated.

The flip-flop on reforms has not been confined to India only and is not a contemporary problem. Even Vladmir Illyich Lenin, who presided over the first communist government in the erstwhile Soviet Union, came out with the New Economic Policy (NEP) which included free markets and capitalism, albeit under state control.