The UPA is not known to be a high roller and Dr Manmohan Singh even less so. The motivation for these high-risk ploys must, therefore, be what was stated: a solution to India's energy problems and a desire to bridge the distance between the producer and the consumer for the benefit of both. Unfortunately, India still waits for the elusive nuclear dawn and foreign investors have not exactly been lining up to partner Indian retailers. External factors may have caused part of this outcome. The world has been wary of nuclear power plants after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has encouraged home-grown protest against the commissioning of the Kudankulam project; and the global economic slowdown has made all foreign ventures a lot less attractive to investors. The fact remains, though, that these gambits have not played out to the advantage of UPA as it had hoped.
Could it have done things differently to achieve the same purpose? Yes, indeed, with qualifications. Even today, conventional power projects are languishing for want of clearances and fuel supplies. True reform, such as the creation of a single authority for final clearance and monitoring under the prime minister announced earlier, would have helped break the logjam. Instead, there will now be yet another task force to discover what is already known. Similarly, effective measures such as the simplification of produce marketing regulations with ease of access to markets and improvement of local roads and storage facilities would have been far more cost-effective solutions to the problem of produce marketing. Remember, one of the most critical contributors to the rapid and relatively inclusive growth of the 2003-2010 period was the construction of roads under the Golden Quadrilateral and the East-West North-South link programmes. The expedient of simply four-laning the existing highways was cheaper and faster than building limited-access expressways. That legacy from the National Democratic Alliance regime may be a bitter pill for the UPA to swallow. But it needs to draw the right moral: not all of India's problems need strategies whose effects will be seen only some years (if not decades) hence. Before rolling the dice yet again, the UPA must consider the here-and-now solutions, which neither cost the earth nor cause political quakes.