NDA is 'scaled-up Congress plus cow', says Shourie

Arun Shourie, minister in the last NDA regime, says data on government claims should be and promises must be kept track of

Arun Shourie, minister in the last National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime, on Monday sharply criticised the actions of the present government, describing them as "timid". He described its policies as "scaled-up Congress plus the cow".

Speaking at a panel discussion after the launch of The Turn of the Tortoise¸ a book written by Business Standard chairman T N Ninan, Shourie said two things needed to be done. First, the data behind any government claims should be carefully examined; and second, promises must be kept track of. He gave the example of the memorandums of understanding with foreign corporations signed at Gujarat's investor summits, Vibrant Gujarat as promises that were not fully followed up on. He also referred to the present Prime Minister's Office (PMO) as the "weakest" in many years even though all powers have been centralised there.

India's long-term economic trajectory, whether it could realistically compete with China, its neighbourhood policy and the policy orientation of the Narendra Modi-led central government were the subjects of discussion and debate at the panel discussion. Apart from Shourie, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian and former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran (both Business Standard columnists) were in conversation with NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain.

Dysfunction in Parliament, Shourie added, was being used as an "alibi" by the government to not do the things it could do anyway. He said former Reserve Bank of India Governor Y V Reddy had told him that "95 per cent" of the problems with public-sector banks could be fixed through executive actions with no need to change the laws.

Attacking what he described as the "hyperbole" of the government, Shourie said it was confusing managing the economy with managing headlines about the economy.

Taking off from an argument in the book that differentiated "policy", the focus of the last government, and "projects", as the focus of this one, Shourie said the scale of this government's policy ambitions should at least match the scale of its ambitions on projects. While the NDA had centralised power in the PMO, it had nobody with the domain expertise to manage it, the way there was in the past, he said.

Shourie added, in Hindi, that "people were remembering Dr Singh"; former prime minister Manmohan Singh was in the audience.

Subramanian defended the government's performance, while adding that he could not "second-guess" the political constraints faced by those "above my pay grade", in an apparent reference to the finance minister and the prime minister. He said on many fronts, the government was taking action, and that a law would soon be ready on bankruptcy, for example.

Saran said the Modi government's initial steps on foreign policy in the neighbourhood had been very promising. But those initial hopes had been belied by recent events, he added. Considerable criticism has been attached to New Delhi's stand on Nepal's adoption of a Constitution, and the disturbances in the Madhesi region of southern Nepal that followed.