The cost of the DMK

DMK-run ministries such as telecom, roads and environment suffer from several infirmities

It has become obvious to even the purblind that coalitions can and often do bring with them a cost in terms of governance and cohesive functioning. When the Left parties were part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, the Indo-US nuclear agreement was as good as dead; the deal went through only when the Prime Minister decided he wanted it badly enough, and dumped the Left. He did not do the same when it came to labour reforms, privatising state-owned units and charging rational utility prices, all of which the Left had opposed, though the government is now pushing through the insurance Bill which raises the foreign investment limit for insurance companies. While a good deal has been written about the price that the country has had to pay on account of the Left’s obstructionism, much less attention has been paid to the cost of having the DMK as a part of the governing coalition. That cost has been much higher than most people imagine.

 

The cost of having A Raja as the communications minister is well known. Last year, he gave away scarce spectrum to firms at a price discovered seven years earlier; while the government got Rs 9,000 crore, two firms sold a part of their equity in their new telecom ventures for around six times what they had paid the government. The loss to the exchequer was tens of thousands of crores. The methods used were a global first: after announcing a cut-off date of October 1 for licence applications, the minister decided that only applications received till September 22 would be processed; and the policy on giving CDMA-mobile phone firms a GSM-mobile licence was announced after Reliance Communications had deposited its licence fee. Now, Mr Raja is taking steps that might have the effect of ensuring that the auction for 3G spectrum, which allows telcos to provide broadband speed internet on mobile phones, is restricted to the existing telecom players.

Mr Raja is not alone. His party colleague, TR Baalu, was pulled up by the Delhi High Court recently because of interference in the work of the National Highways Authority of India and the fact that, under Mr Baalu, it had had five chairmen in two-and-a-half years. The government’s own evaluation of the NHAI found that, last year, it had achieved only half the target for roadwork in Phases I and II. The same NHAI, under a different leadership during NDA rule, had functioned as a modern business entity and managed to finish the major part of the 5,846 km Golden Quadrilateral project. The World Bank now has a report which speaks of huge delays, over-engineering of contracts, and a poor safety record during construction. The Bank now threatens to pull out hundreds of millions of dollars of commitments to NHDP projects.

The environment ministry, now run by two ministers of state (Sevugan Regupathy and Namo Narain Meena) has also been the preserve of the DMK and, like the other ministries, suffers from several infirmities. Doesn’t the DMK want to be known for good governance, or does it not care? And what of the Congress, which accepts all this and more as the price for staying in power?