In 2004, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was a coalition born out of necessity rather than intent, aimed at seizing an opportunity rather than pursue an agenda. Quite unexpectedly, the Indian National Congress led by Sonia Gandhi found itself capable of forming a government provided it could stitch together a coalition. The verdict of 2004 was sufficiently anti-incumbent, as in 1996, and so the ruling National Democratic Alliance conceded defeat. The Left Front was willing to make common cause with its main rival, the Congress party (since it is the Congress and not the Bharatiya Janata Party that the Left has to defeat in Kerala and West Bengal) on the basis of a hurriedly drafted, ill-considered National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP). A new, left-of-centre government was born. Ms Gandhi was wise enough to understand that she could never really become the prime minister, even with all the genuflecting sycophancy around her, and she wisely chose a man who had administrative experience and political acumen. He also showed unexpected political savvy in running a fractious coalition. While the Left Front and many in the Congress take credit for having drawn up the NCMP, what really injected energy into the first UPA government was the sense of purpose generated by the desire to reverse the tide of communal politics post-Godhra, to arrest farmers’ suicides and to get the nation’s focus back to economic development. “Inclusive Growth” became the new buzz word and a number of programmes were launched in its pursuit. A coincidence of circumstances in the region and globally enabled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to launch on a high stakes diplomatic initiative to reverse India’s nuclear pariah status and seek a settlement of the border issue with China and peace with Pakistan. All of this was more than a government could ask for as an agenda for a five-year term. While not every goal was met, nor every target hit, UPA-1 did reasonably well on both domestic social and economic fronts and the external foreign policy front. The clever articulation of these achievements put the Opposition on the defensive and a divided Opposition neutralised itself, enabling the Congress to return to power with larger numbers. Prime Minister Singh’s patient, if excessively accommodative, handling of the coalition and his ability to pursue consensual decision-making helped the coalition gel and function, with few hiccups.
One achievement that the government has surprisingly shied away from adequately highlighting is the fact that the UPA not only delivered five years of near 9 per cent economic growth, and this has made India a trillion-dollar economy, but that it has also successfully steered the country through a global economic crisis of Himalayan proportions. While the world pats India on the back, the UPA fights shy of patting itself enough on the back! Indeed, if most opinion polls conducted in the past week give the UPA reasonably good marks and the prime minister respectably high marks for good performance, it is because the country seems to give the government more credit than its own political constituents!
However, a year after its return to power, the Congress party and the UPA coalition have not yet found a new policy platform for their second term in office. Hear the chairperson of the UPA and the prime minister and they have repeated in the past year most of what they had said in the five years of their first term. Inclusive growth, peace with neighbours, creating an atmosphere conducive to India’s long-term development, the fight against terrorism and extremism, etc., etc. The slogans are the same and so are the programmes — National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, Bharat Nirman, rural health mission, urban renewal mission, skill development mission, and so on. More worryingly, public policy under the UPA has come to be identified with the legislation of rights, and much less with the discharge of responsibilities. Right to information, to employment, to education, to food, to seats in Parliament and colleges, to government funding, to this and to that.
A long list of rights and a plethora of entitlements involving humungous fiscal commitments. Without fiscal commitment and administrative support, many of these rights become empty promises. But along with legislating rights, the government has the responsibility to discharge certain duties too. In the realm of internal and external security and law and order, it has the responsibility to govern. In the realm of public finance and economic policy, it has the responsibility to manage public finances prudently and ensure stability of policy, efficiency of government and the markets. It is not clear whether the government has discharged these responsibilities to the satisfaction of all.
The government should work to build on this record and ensure the sustainability of the “inclusive growth” process. The government will be unable to deliver on its agenda of rights — education, health, food and employment — if it cannot reform the administrative machinery and find the required financial resources. Improved public services delivery and improved public finances are vital to the stability and sustainability of the growth process. The government also has the responsibility to deal more effectively with challenges to internal and external security. An avoidable political blame-game has become entwined with an incipient power struggle within the main ruling party. Immature political management has weakened the government, as was obvious in the Budget session of Parliament. It also appears as if the prime minister has retreated into foreign policy given the difficulty of negotiating his way through domestic politics. In his first year in office, in 2004-05, Dr Singh travelled extensively around the country and focused largely on the government’s domestic agenda. In the first year of his second term, he has not only travelled abroad more but has not paid as much attention to the agenda of governance at home, leaving this field largely to the ministers of finance and home. At a time when most world leaders are focused mostly on domestic economic issues, they are unlikely to have time for any major global initiatives. This has come through clearly in the climate change and trade negotiations. While Dr Singh should remain intellectually engaged in the G-20 process and at all times seek dialogue with Pakistan and China, he should focus much more on the domestic economy and polity, and ensure that his uneven team of some good performers and many non-performers delivers more, discharging its responsibilities and not just distributing rights. The UPA was lucky to beat anti-incumbency in 2009, but the “revolution of rising expectations” marches on and the Indian voter’s mood can move very quickly from enduring patience to unpredictable impatience.
