With just two assembly elections in the next 18 months, the government has enough room for major policy changes.
The Indian electoral calendar has just entered an unusual phase. If there are no major political upheavals or changes in political equations (and the chances of such developments are extremely unlikely), there will be only two assembly elections between now and May 2011. That is a period of about 18 months.
Compare this with what happened in the last five calendar years and what we are likely to see in the next five years. There were five assembly elections in 2004, followed by three in 2005, five assembly elections again in 2006, seven in 2007 and 10 assembly elections in 2008. In the current calendar year, we have already seen six assembly elections. Leave out 2010, when there will be only two assembly elections, the number of states going to elections in the following years runs as follows: Five in 2011, seven in 2012, 10 in 2013 and six in 2014.
If you consider that the two assembly elections to be held in 2010 are in Bihar and Jharkhand and that the political impact of these election results on the fortunes of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will be limited, the significance of the next 18 months becomes even more obvious. It is a window of opportunity for the Manmohan Singh government, which may suddenly realise that its ministers and bureaucrats can breathe a little more freely during this period and take decisions without being unduly worried by the impact their action might have on the ruling alliance’s political fortunes.
If civil servants are to be believed, the economic policy landscape can certainly benefit from this reprieve. Can the stalled legislation on land acquisition and rehabilitation of displaced persons be revived and readied for Parliament’s clearance in this period? The insurance sector has long been waiting for changes in the foreign investment norms and other policy relaxations. The policy on disinvestment of government equity in public sector undertakings can be finalised during this period. A final decision can be taken on the question of a new oil pricing regime, an issue that has been hanging fire for several months even as international crude oil prices have been steadily rising and thus straining the finances of state-owned oil refiners and marketers.
The list of imperatives on the economic policy front can be longer. But a more significant intervention would be to bring about a minor ministerial reshuffle to get rid of ministers who have not performed well but whom the government had to tolerate because they were politically indispensable. In this context, the power ministry certainly needs a new minister. Now that the Maharashtra assembly elections are over, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde can be given some other less important ministry and he could be replaced with a more competent minister.
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In recent years, the power ministry has had the misfortune of being saddled with ministers who were there more for their political connections than for their ability to perform. PM Sayeed was power minister for the first few years of the UPA government’s first term. Then came Sushil Kumar Shinde, who continued in the same job in the second term of the UPA government also. All this happened while the government failed to meet the target for adding power generation capacity for successive five-year plans, as a result of which it has had to scale it down.
Similarly, the UPA government can now subject the performance of its ministers from the alliance partners to a closer scrutiny. Praful Patel, Mamata Banerjee and A Raja should figure in this list. While Patel as the civil aviation minister has got bogged down with the problems of Air India, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee appears to be less concerned about the Indian Railways and more focused on West Bengal and her political goal of winning the 2011 assembly elections in that state. Communications Minister A Raja’s exploits in the telecommunications are now being closely followed in the wake of the probe the Central Bureau of Investigations has launched into the manner in which telecom licences were granted to industry.
The Congress leadership should be aware that its performance in the last general elections and in the just-concluded assembly elections has given it the additional flexibility to deal with its alliance partners a little more firmly than it could have otherwise done. The assembly elections in Maharashtra are over. The next assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are scheduled only after a gap of 18 months. Now is the time for the Congress to go in for a quick reshuffle of ministries to bring in a new set of leaders for the ministries of civil aviation, railways and communications. This is a short window of opportunity for the Congress. If this opportunity is lost, the Congress may well rue it. The poor performance of these ministries is a comment not just on UPA’s alliance partners, but also on the manner in which the Congress has been running the UPA.