Wanted: more leadership

Three years into the Manmohan Singh government's life, three things are clear. First, the initial doubts about its ability to last the full term have given way to frustration that it has not been able to deliver, on economic reforms, what most people would have expected from a government headed by Dr Singh. Second, the government's signature spending initiatives (Bharat Nirman, the rural employment guarantee scheme, national urban renewal mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and the like) have failed to deliver to their potential because of imperfect implementation, which was to be expected as the government delivery system has severe limitations""and virtually no reform of the administration has been attempted, or of governance processes. Third, in the wake of the electoral debacle in Uttar Pradesh, pressure within the Congress will mount for doing things that the party thinks will prevent a repetition when the Lok Sabha elections come round.

For reasons that become clear on a little reflection, the stellar performances have come from ministers belonging not to the Congress but to the coalition partners: the unlikely Lalu Prasad at the railways, the more predictable Praful Patel with civil aviation and, with qualifications, even the ousted Dayanidhi Maran. To that list you should add P Chidambaram at finance because the economy has done well and fiscal improvement has continued, but with inflation having been slightly higher than desirable over the past year, no one in the Congress seems in a mood to give him much credit for anything. Indeed, the only voices being heard from the Congress are those of leftist protest, like Mani Shankar Aiyar's, whose efforts to improve performance in petroleum did not find favour for reasons not disclosed.

Much of the government's inaction on key issues has been blamed on the Left parties, without whose support no legislation can pass. But it should be clear that the real opposition to what the Prime Minister might want to do comes from his own party. With neither the freedom to choose his team (Arjun Singh at human resource development cannot surely be his preference, and moving Mr Aiyar from petroleum was the party president's decision), nor a mandate from the party to push for reform in critical areas such as power (the biggest blot when one looks at infrastructure), the Prime Minister has been reduced to making ineffective speeches about crony capitalism""even as his commerce and industry minister runs amok with the special economic zones.

As for the Congress ministers, one wonders what Pranab Mukherjee was able to do at defence, given what the Comptroller and Auditor General has just said about the state of affairs in defence procurement. Shivraj Patil at home has kept down the communal temperature, but has made little progress in either reforming the police or controlling the Maoist threat. In external affairs, the Prime Minister's big moves on the US (the nuclear pact) and Pakistan (on Kashmir) are still works in process; the Nepal crisis has been satisfactorily resolved, but Bangladesh now looms as an even bigger problem. And if one looks for significant new legislation, the only real breakthrough (if you put aside rural employment guarantee) is on the right to information; a whole lot of other proposed legislation is still in the deep folds of the government system""on company law, the competition commission, and the press, to take but three examples where the Left is not a stumbling block.

The defining impression is that the Prime Minister has not been able to put his full stamp on the government that he leads. This is almost certainly because of the special circumstances of his appointment, the nature of the UPA coalition and its independent-minded partners, and Dr Singh's ill-considered decision to not test the limits of his own power to force the agenda. A cartoonist may have been unkind but had a point when he had an aide tell Dr Singh that his sacrifice has been greater than Sonia Gandhi's, as he has "renounced the PM's post while being the PM"!