Credibility, Corruption Major Problems of PM Manmohan Singh
By Rajeev Srinivasan
NEW DELHI, May 21: The French have been the most regular practitioners of the
vaguely risqué art of cohabitation, that is, the balancing of multiple centers
of power in an administration.
For instance, a socialist president and a conservative prime minister who
share power. The internal contradictions in this arrangement are such that not
much gets done: the various parties have too many pet shibboleths that they
would not sacrifice even if it killed them.
India has just gone through a year of cohabitation, aptly summed up by the
phrase: 'PM, Super-PM, and CPM'. There is the nominal PM, Manmohan Singh; the
Super-PM, Madame Gandhi, who, constitutionally speaking, has no power, but
that is just the theory; and the Community Party, Marxist, which threatens to
pull down the minority UPA government. This is hardly a recipe for success,
and it shows.
It amuses me that Manmohan Singh's name is never mentioned without the
descriptive phrase 'the architect of India's economic reforms' being added to
it, so much so that he should trademark it. It reminds me of the fact that
Benazir Bhutto's name used to similarly carry an inevitable suffix, 'educated
at Radcliffe and Oxford' as part of the attempt to portray Pakistan as
a 'modern, model, moderate' Muslim country.
Unfortunately, despite this pedigree, Singh and company (especially Finance
Minister P Chidambaram) have not been able to make much of an impact on the
economic front. Despite great expectations, they have accomplished little in
this full year of their rule. A pessimist would wonder India is heading back
to the bad old days of the Nehruvian Rate of Growth of 3 per cent.
The statistics of growth are not by any means stellar. The momentum of the
last few years of sustained growth is not there. The recent Budget has been
seen as uninspired, except when it comes to particularly strange ideas about
taxing corporate fringe-benefits and withdrawals of as little as Rs 10,000 in
cash.
There are at least three problems the Singh government faces: credibility,
massive corruption, and Marxists.
1. Credibility: Singh is not a politician, never actually having won any
elections. Most observers suggest that he is a decent man who understands
economics. However, it is also abundantly clear to the casual observer that he
is holding the fort until the next Nehru Dynasty scion, Rahul Gandhi, can be
anointed as prime minister. Therefore it is a little hard for Singh to act
decisively, for he can be over-ruled by any of Sonia Gandhi's kitchen cabinet.
2. Massive Corruption: This is at two levels, one, the ordinary variety
espoused by various scam-ridden individuals in government, and relating to
money. This is a minor vice: after all, it is only money, and all politicians
anywhere in the world are champions at feeding off the pork-barrel trough.
A much more major vice is the degradation of institutions. The Election
Commission is under attack; the Supreme Court has come out with a number of
unfathomable rulings that a neutral observer might say are ideologically
slanted; the education system is being re-Stalinised; and the bureaucracy is
salivating over increased rent-seeking for such inanities as the 'employment-
guarantee act'. A government that condones these is not helping the nation or
the economy.
3. Obstructionism: And that too by committed Marxists. They are making merry
with their usual espousal of policies guaranteed to perpetuate poverty: for
instance, in obstructing foreign direct investment, and in the current
brouhaha over special economic zones. By ensuring that restrictive labor laws
will be re-imposed on the SEZs, they have handicapped them dramatically.
I wonder why they don't notice that their idol, China, does give complete
freedom to employers in their special economic zones. And oh, while they are
at it, India's Marxists should also be asked to explain why the banned Survey
of Chinese Peasants paints an unrelenting picture of rural China as a poverty-
ridden hell-hole as a result of following precisely the same anti-poor
policies they, India's Marxists, espouse.
So much for the economy, supposedly Singh's strong suite. Foreign policy, as
usual, is the Congress's worst area, as they have consistently failed to
realize that it is India's interests they are supposed to look after, not
someone else's.
The current dispensation is especially into NAM and such-like; and all the
billing and cooing with Pakistan's and China's dictators has produced
practically nothing tangible other than increased Indian trade with China.
This sounds impressive until one realizes that almost all the increased Indian
exports to China are raw materials, especially iron ore.
China, in addition to its outposts at Gwadar and in the Andaman Sea, is
rumored to be leasing an island from the Maldives. I have consistently seen
this rumor in enough places (latest in the Far Eastern Economic Review, April
issue) to believe there is something to it. If this turns out to be true, what
exactly will Natwar Singh do? Invoke more bhai-bhai? All the bhai-bhai with
Pakistan hasn't produced any less by way of terrorism, one might note in
passing.
Any improvement in India's standing in the world has come strictly by accident
through economic growth, not through any plan by the foreign policy
establishment.
Now that the UPA government has successfully applied the brakes to economic
growth, things will revert to the status quo ante of India's begging-bowl
image. And incidentally, if progress has been slow in the past one year, it
will be glacial in the next year as the Congress and Marxists fight it out in
elections in West Bengal and Kerala where they do not exactly cohabit. -
Courtesy Rediff.com
http://www.satribune.com/archives/200505/P1_raj.htm
MAY BALL 2005 (Kuwait) in pictures
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gulf-goans/message/5843
