Subir Roy: Yes, a survival strategy for Congress

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It is the Congress, much more than the BJP, which is in urgent need of a survival strategy because the next time the voter puts her finger on the EVM to select her MP; the anti-incumbency boot will be on the other foot.

Congressmen have no more than a couple of years to rule, given the instability inherent in the current electoral arithmetic. So they have but one choice "" take a few bold measures, ignoring the various vested interests, within the first six months or maybe just a hundred days of coming to power, and use this record to seek another mandate like Vajpayee did in 1999.

The worst case scenario for the Congress and its allies is that which the United Front partners confronted in 1998 when they faced the electorate after making a fair mess of the chance they got in 1996.

The least of the Congress' problem will be to devise an agenda because the electoral verdict has made its outlines clear. The first and the most important element is that the divisive ideology of Hindutva has been thrown out by the electorate.

If the Ram mandir and Gujarat riots could have delivered the votes then Vajpayee and Narendra Modi would have been on top of the world. For all his high personal popularity rating, Vajpayee could not carry the NDA over the hurdles posed by the anti-incumbency factor in most states.

On the other hand Sonia Gandhi, the victim of enormous personal vilification, sailed through at the head of the largest single party in the new parliament. So above all the new government should be as socially inclusive as possible, emphasising the oneness of India.

The second point is not to try to juggle statistics and create a feel good factor, claiming that India is shining on the basis of one good monsoon and a stock market boom.

The last few days have shown how fragile and speculative the boom was. When after a US rate rise Western institutional investors took some of their money out of Asian markets, the Indian market fell the most.

This underlines the fact that this is a very thin market led by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and most domestic investors simply try to second guess the FIIs.

The market, particularly public sector stocks, also fell at the dimmed prospects of further disinvestments, indicating that the boom in PSU scrips was based more on prospects of disinvestments and less on their fundamentals.

The brittle nature of the market sentiment and the spuriousness of the "India Shining" message should prompt the Congress to pursue an economic policy which seeks to address the immediate needs of the vast majority of Indians who are poor and live in the countryside. From this emerges economic priority number one "" addressing the needs of agriculture and the ills that affect it.

By doing so the government will grapple with another issue of utmost importance, the worsening employment situation created by the missing jobs in agriculture.

Left leaders who are doing themselves and the country harm by opposing privatisation because of their support base among PSU employees nevertheless need to be given credit for getting one part of the sum right.

The contrast between West Bengal on the one hand and Andhra and Karnataka on the other in the policy approach to agriculture is too glaring to be missed and goes a long way in explaining why the Left Front improved its tally in West Bengal and Krishna and Naidu bit the dust.

Through the 1990s, West Bengal recorded the second highest growth in per capita income powered by agricultural growth, bettered only by Tamil Nadu and closely followed by Karnataka. The income distribution in Karnataka is far more uneven than in West Bengal.

Consequently, even as Bangalore booms, there are a few districts in Karnataka which are as deprived as sub-Saharan Africa! You invite political hara-kiri if you do not give top priority to agriculture in a country where 56 per cent of the people rely on it for a living.

To set agriculture right issues like water, power, fertilisers and roads will have to be addressed. As soon as you try to grapple with any of these you come face to face with reforms, indicating that reforms have to go on and they were not really an issue in the elections. The issue was getting the reform priorities right.

For example, it is vital to ensure that fertilisers are priced right so that a proper mix of fertilisers is applied by farmers, instead of harmful and excessive use of urea.

Without this agricultural yields cannot go up. If to enable all this non-viable public sector fertiliser plants have to be closed down, then so be it. The Left is unlikely to make an issue of it the same way as it will over privatisation of oil companies or banks.

Then comes water harvesting, watershed management, making irrigation projects pay so that the assets can be maintained and regulating the use of groundwater. Along with it comes farmers' need for assured supply of power of minimum quality (so that pump sets do not burn out) for a few hours a day.

Once this is made available, most of them will happily pay a price for it. It is not as if there are no vested interests in the countryside.

They are symbolised by the rich farmer with political clout who uses a pump set and free power to raise ground water to grow water guzzling sugarcane (whose purchase is subsidised) and also to sell surplus water to adjoining farms! This is where the battle has to be waged. And agricultural marketing cannot take off unless rural roads are vastly improved.

There are other high priorities, like primary and secondary education (not IIM fees) and basic healthcare. In most of these areas the state governments have to play a major role in actually making things happen.

So the central government's role becomes more of a facilitator. There is a lot to do and a lot can be done provided you have your priorities right.

sub@business-standard.com