UPA GOVERNMENT

Change Course Or Pay Political Price

  By A Political

Commentator

THE political situation is marked by a growing disenchantment amongst the people with the UPA government.  This is getting reflected in the electoral defeats suffered by the Congress party – whether it be in Punjab, Uttarakhand or the Delhi corporation elections.

There is a disconnect between what the people and even the Congress mass base are expecting and what the UPA government and its ministers are striving for.

The finance minister glibly talks of achieving a 10 per cent GDP growth, at a time when he should be seriously tackling the problems of inflation and price rise. His other concerns seem to be how to get the pension fund privatised and raise the FDI cap in insurance. 

The agriculture minister seems oblivious that procurement of wheat by the FCI is languishing, while private traders corner the crop. This will have a deleterious effect on the Public Distribution System where already there has been a cutback on supplies. The urgent need is to strengthen the Public Distribution System on a war footing.  Instead, what has happened is the curtailment of the PDS through non-issuance of BPL cards and by restricting the scope of coverage of the PDS.  The finance minister has provided for an increase of 6.2 per cent in the food subsidy in the union budget when the rate of inflation is 6 to 7 per cent, thereby actually whittling down the subsidy. 

The UPA government has totally failed to tackle the agrarian crisis. It has refused to implement even one of the major recommendations of the National Farmers Commission which was itself set-up by it. It is still pursuing policies which will harm agriculture. The terms of the Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN will entail further cuts in import duties of agricultural commodities. 

The commerce minister is bent upon bringing FDI in retail by hook or by crook. The Wal-Mart-Mittal deal is one such venture. The Congress president is unable to stop FDI in retail, even after asking the government to be careful on the issue. The UPA government and the Congress leadership will be responsible for ruining the livelihood of lakhs of small shopkeepers and petty traders, if the commerce minister has his way.

The commerce minister is also the ardent advocate of the SEZs which, in its present form, is designed to promote real estate profiteering and, through exorbitant tax sops, distort the pattern of development in the country. The minister’s dogged defence of existing Act and Rules indicates that he is not alone in pushing for this iniquitous model of SEZs. 

The deputy chairman of the Planning Commission has emerged as the eminence grise for pushing through the neo-liberal policies. The UPA government is utilising his position to push through all these measures which it finds politically difficult to adopt.  The government had committed in the UPA-Left Coordination Committee that apart from Delhi and Mumbai, the other two metro airports – Kolkata and Chennai – will be modernised by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) when the Left parties had strongly opposed the privatisation of the former. There was also the commitment that the 35 non-metro airports would also be modernised by the Airports Authority of India.  Now devious moves are afoot for the piecemeal privatisation of the airport operations.  The Planning Commission now wants the modernisation of the terminal in the non-metro airports to be opened to private parties. The clear commitment that AAI would modernise the Kolkata airport is also sought to be scuttled. The civil aviation minister is also complicit in moves to open the 35 non-metro airports to the private sector.

The UPA government seeks to push forward neo-liberal reforms not only through the Planning Commission but by attaching conditionalities to transfer of resources and central funding to the states.  The last two Finance Commissions saw terms of reference which are outside the constitutional framework for the devolution of resources. There are fears the next Commission may also have similar terms of reference. 

The UPA government is far from implementing the pro-people measures in the Common Minimum Programme.  Nearly three years are over of the UPA government, but there is no sign of the legislation for the social security of the unorganised workers. The UPA alliance has failed to bring the legislation to fulfil its commitment on the one-third reservation for women.  Both in health and education, there is little progress towards the target set in the Common Minimum Programme for expenditure in both these sectors as a percentage of the GDP.

It is five months since the Sachar Committee submitted its report. Yet the government has not come out with any concrete measure for socio-economic advancement of the minorities.

The bilateral negotiations with the United States for the Nuclear  Cooperation Agreement are being held despite the serious opposition to the terms and conditions set out in the US legislation on the matter. The UPA government is silent of the hostile stance taken by the United States in the transfer of sensitive technology as seen in the recent arrest of personnel of Indian companies which were acting on behalf of Indian State agencies in aero-space.

Apart from the popular discontent on the economic measures, the Congress and its UPA partners have also contributed to facilitating some of the  successes of the BJP and the communal forces.  The most glaring example is in Maharashtra, where the Congress and the NCP are locked in a no-holds barred contest.  In Pune corporation, the NCP combined with the Shiv Sena for the mayor and deputy mayor posts.  The Congress retaliated in some other places in a similar fashion. Consorting with the Shiv Sena is an unpardonable act for a secular party.

The Congress leadership is at a crossroads.  It has to decide whether it wants to run a government which keeps the priorities of US companies like Wal-Mart and AIG uppermost, or, the country’s sovereign interests.  Whether it will muster the courage to direct the government to effect a major course correction, or, continue to concede political ground to the BJP and the rightwing opposition. 

The CPI(M) in its recent central committee meeting resolved that it cannot go alongwith the UPA government’s neo-liberal and anti-people prescriptions. The Congress leadership should not take the support of the Left parties to the government for granted by posing the threat of the BJP.  It is precisely because the BJP is benefiting from the Congress stance and the government’s policies that the CPI(M) firmly opposes all those political and economic measures which create the grounds for the communal forces to feed on popular discontent. The Congress leadership has to ensure that the UPA government changes course. Failure to do so will extract a heavy political price.