T N Ninan: No midlife crisis

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

Next week, the Manmohan Singh government will be at the mid-point of its five-year term. They say that the useful life of a government is till it reaches the halfway mark, at which stage it has either lost momentum or got involved in some crisis, and in the final year all it can think of is trying to win back lost votes. The interesting thing about the Singh government is that it is the first one in nearly half a century that has reached the half-way mark without a midlife crisis.

Four of its predecessors never reached the half-way mark. Of those that lasted the full term, the Vajpayee government (1999-2004) never lived down the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. The Rao government of 1991-96 was consumed by the Babri demolition and its aftermath (riots, bomb blasts) before two years were up, and after electoral setbacks in key states and no-confidence votes that were won by bribing MPs, had little appetite for economic reform. In contrast, there is communal peace today and no challenge in Parliament. The Rajiv government was hit by the Bofors scandal just before the half-way mark and manufactured a crisis by reversing the Shah Bano judgment; it never recovered from these blunders, whereas Dr Singh remains "Mr Clean" and ministers who have been caught out have either made their exit or don't seem to affect the government's image.

Going further back in time, Indira Gandhi's 1980-84 government was confronted by Bhindrawale's challenge to the Indian state by 1982-83 and a deepening Punjab crisis; the comparable challenge for Dr Singh would be the Maoist problem, but serious though it is, it is below the radar screen for most people. Mrs Gandhi's 1971-77 government by 1973 was up against hyper-inflation and corruption charges, and the resulting JP movement, but inflation is moderate today and the opposition is in disarray. And, of course, Mrs Gandhi's 1967-71 prime ministership saw the Congress split of 1969 and perhaps the most turbulent period of Indian politics, whereas now there is political stability and no one expects the government to fall. Even Jawaharlal Nehru's 1962-64 government never recovered from the Chinese border war of 1962.

So we are talking of an exceptional situation here; not only is there no crisis bearing down on the government, but things look positively rosy in some ways. The Prime Minister has grown into his role these past two-and-a-half years, and his partnership with Sonia Gandhi seems to have settled down. No one who wants economic reform expects Dr Singh to do very much any more, but the economy is doing so well that this oft-voiced criticism has lost its sting. The foreign policy initiatives with the US and Pakistan have run aground, and there are new problems with China, but the Prime Minister is generally perceived to have done well in this arena. As for the socio-political agenda, the "aam admi" action plan is in place, with laws passed, reservations announced and programmes started. Sure, farmers continue to commit suicide, but neither the BJP nor even the Communists seem keen to mount a challenge on the issue of rural distress. All of which might explain the polls that say that the government and party chiefs score pretty well when voters are surveyed.

Some points are worth making, when looking forward. First, just because some issues have not hit Dr Singh's government in the solar plexus does not mean that they are not real and urgent. The farmer distress is real, the Maoist challenge is growing, and the signs of domestic Muslim elements becoming engaged in jihadist violence are disturbing in the extreme. Second, the government would be fooling itself if it came to the conclusion that the reform issues that it had ignored or abandoned didn't matter. They do and they will. Third, what holds the country (and especially the poor) back are multiple governance failures, and there has been little corrective action on this. Dr Singh remains a good advertisement for his government, but the government itself has been lucky to be in office when the stars are in the right alignment for India.