Hopes belied

The UPA government is about to complete two years in office. Those who would have been its loudest cheer-leaders when the government was formed, will now be a largely disappointed lot, primarily because the Prime Minister has not done what they had hoped he would do""lead the reform charge. Old-style Congressmen, unhappy that Sonia Gandhi refused the job two years ago, have begun clamouring that she take it now""which suggests that they are less than happy with the present dispensation. And constitutionalists must wonder about the implications of the diminution of the post of head of government""since the party chief manifestly wields real power (all the government's major policy initiatives have emerged from her National Advisory Council). So how much of a difference is there, today, between the substantive positions of the prime ministers of India and Pakistan?

That no one is overtly exercised by these issues owes a great deal to the remarkably healthy state of the economy (and to the credit of the government, macro-economic management has been good on every front other than the issue of oil prices). The stars have been favourable to the government, too, for the BJP's loss of internal compass has given the government plenty of breathing room. One could also have scored a point for the government because of the Prime Minister's personal integrity, but after the Quattrocchi affair, Mr Natwar Singh's resignation in the wake of the Volcker report, and the mis-steps in Goa, Jharkhand and Bihar, no claim can be made to a moral halo.

The government's survival was seen as a question-mark in the early days. Today, most observers would be surprised if the government did not last its full term""and this new sense of political stability is a point scored by and for the government. The critics will argue that this is in part because the Left has been allowed free rein on key issues, and because some of the coalition partners have been allowed free rein in other ways (remember Shibu Soren)""but that may be the unavoidable price of coalition politics. The best that can be said is that Manmohan Singh's personal style has been an elegant combination of personal moderation and dignity, and this has improved the image of the government as a whole. Dr Singh has also proved adept at handling foreign relations.

Where the UPA government has been positively retrograde is in its introduction of economic and social policies that belonged to an era that everyone thought was dead and gone. Most strikingly, it has re-introduced statism and hand-out socialism, and however much the Congress would like to blame the Left for this, the fact is that it wholeheartedly approves of such policies. For the Left, there is the defence of ideological conviction. For the Congress, it is more a case of old habits of thinking, or plain opportunism. The damage that such policies do should be assessed from the perspective of how difficult it will be to reverse these policies.

When the Congress reverted to the old principle that the party and the government would be headed by different people, it was widely hoped that this would result in more efficient government. But that has not happened because the Prime Minister has not been assertive enough and the party president, protestations notwithstanding, has not been as supportive as she might have been. The consequence is that the government is being run on a principle that is antithetical to the Cabinet system, in which the Prime Minister, nominally only the first among equals, is none the less the person in charge. Episodes like Arjun Singh launching the reservation campaign, Ram Vilas Paswan threatening price control, and Congressmen calling for Sonia Gandhi to take the mantle of Prime Minister, suggest that Dr Singh is less than fully in charge""and that is at the heart of the problem with this government.