The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power for the second time on 22 May 2009. It was a sharper, stronger UPA, with 61 more MPs than before, minus the crutches of the Left parties that had caused the government so much grief in its first term. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister for the second time, put together his 78-member team of young and some old faces, in one week, suggesting the UPA would hit the ground running.
The hopes were belied. Months into office, the ministries of rural development, human resource development, home, finance and commerce reported some results thanks to energetic ministers. But the actual rollout of crucial steps like Right to Education took time.
The most lasting legacy of the government has to be high food prices. Despite repeated monetary interventions, food inflation defied control, leading to an overall loss of credibility as the government’s own inflation control deadlines were breached repeatedly. It didn’t help that ministers – Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor being the first and Telecom Minister A Raja and MP and Commonwealth Games Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi following – had to step down on charges of cronyism and corruption. The perception of the government was that all it was doing was feathering its own nest.
The government’s defence - that - effective legislation to check corruption had been drafted- was swept away as the entire winter session of Parliament in 2011 went without transacting any useful business, peaking with an anti-corruption campaign by social activist Anna Hazare, the aftereffects of which linger .
If in its first term, the UPA complained of being hamstrung by the Left, it was one of its own allies, the Trinamool Congress that stymied some of its most ambitious moves in its second term. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail was nixed by TMC; and when it didn’t like the railway budget (2012) it replaced the Railway Minister and got the passenger fare hike proposal rolled back.
Social and financial inclusion was the big idea of the UPA, especially UPA II. But success reported was limited.
To be fair, some of the government’s problems were externally generated. As the euro zone crisis failed to resolve and RBI remained focused on fighting inflation, the overall economic growth was estimated to decline to 6.9 per cent (last fiscal) against 8.4 per cent in each of the previous two financial years. (India in the last 3 years... and the rest)
Due to slackening of demand overseas, current account deficit rose to 4 per cent of GDP in the first nine months of last fiscal. In the darkest days of 1990-91, the deficit was 3 per cent. The actual fiscal deficit of the Centre has risen to 5.9 per cent of GDP last fiscal against 4.9 per cent in 2010-11. There has been no reform of the subsidy regime for petroleum products. The net result? No one was happy and UPA-II became a victim of policy paralysis.
It showed. UPA lost one election after another, capping its performance with the party’s sorry performance in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections where it increased its electoral presence by a mere six seats.
The only success story is relations with Pakistan. With a proposed Pakistan visit by the Prime Minister later this year, this is a justifiable feather in the government’s cap – and makes up for an otherwise dismal performance.
