The Opposition mess

In the UPA's second tenure, the conduct of the Opposition, which should have offered an alternative, has been no less disquieting

Too many things have gone wrong in the last couple of weeks for anyone to remain unperturbed about the deteriorating state of governance in this country. The Union government has messed up on almost all fronts. It has failed to fully recover from the policy paralysis it was suffering from. Its policy response to macroeconomic challenges has not been adequate. Worse, its handling of various charges of corruption against its departments has been both cynical and inept.  

But the point here is not just how the United Progressive Alliance government in its second tenure has failed to live up to the expectations of the people whose mandate returned it to power in 2009. The conduct of the Opposition political parties, which should have offered an alternative, has been no less disquieting.  
 

Take, for instance, what happened on Tuesday. The country’s main Opposition political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), decided to walk out of the Lok Sabha while the Union Budget for 2013-14 was to be passed. For the past several days, since the resumption of Parliament’s Budget session, the BJP has stepped up its protests in a manner that no meaningful business could be conducted in either of the Houses. That behaviour itself was irresponsible. By not allowing Parliament to function, the Opposition political parties denied the nation an opportunity to hear what the government had to say about its many failures or achievements. Worse, no legislative business was thus allowed to be completed, resulting in a waste of time and taxpayers’ money.  

But the sheer opportunism and cynical approach to politics were evident when the same Opposition political parties agreed to maintain peace for the government to get its Budget passed without much trouble. To facilitate that process, major Opposition leaders walked out to register their protest against the government. But what happens to their responsibility as legislators to subject the Budget and its provisions to necessary scrutiny before they are passed? A Budget that mandates the expenditure of over Rs 16.65 lakh crore (over a sixth of the country’s total gross domestic product!) is passed even as the main Opposition party walks out of the Lok Sabha.

Worse things have happened to the Union Budget in the past. Not too long ago, a Budget was passed after the government that had presented it had lost the confidence of the House. The argument then was that elections had to be held and it was safer to have the Budget out of the way so that the government’s finances did not face any uncertainty. So, leaders of all the political parties represented in Parliament agreed to sink their differences and voted the Budget. Pragmatists might say that this was a better option than exposing the country’s finances to the vagaries of politics.

But did not those politicians worry about the consequences of their action before pulling the rug from under the government’s feet? Why did they agree to bail out the Budget? Or was it done because nobody wanted to face the financial costs they too would have to bear if the Budget got derailed? The motto seemed to have been that protests were all right and blocking all legislative business or discussion in Parliament was acceptable, but not at the cost of Parliament’s inability to pass the Budget. It seems the spectre of 1991 continues to haunt our politicians. Nobody would like to repeat Rajiv Gandhi’s adventurism in forcing a minority government to resign even before it could present a Budget, the consequence of which meant an escalation of India’s unprecedented economic crisis, made worse by a delayed Budget in July, instead of the usual month of February.

Why blame only the BJP? Take a look at the alternative forces that could form the next alliance at the Centre after the general elections. The Trinamool Congress leadership is embroiled in a scandal that will take years for the party to live down. What hope can it offer to the people of either West Bengal or India? Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) is busy securing extra financial allocations for the state from the Centre. It has made more central grants to the state a condition to its support to whichever alliance that comes to power at the Centre after the next general elections, whenever they are held. Leaders of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have also made clear that their support to the next formation would be dependent on what special deals the Centre can offer to their vote bank or constituency.

One might argue that in alliance politics, such negotiations to give and take are not unusual. That perhaps is understandable. What creates an intricate problem is when regional partners of an alliance secure deals with the Centre that are not necessarily aimed at helping the country’s overall progress. And that problem aggravates when you have a majority partner of an alliance, which is willing to concede those demands to keep the government intact. If the next alliance government at the Centre is led by the BJP, make no mistake that the Congress’ behaviour would be the same as the BJP’s has been in the past nine years. For India, that is not good news.