UPA's stock-taking

The Singh government can claim many credits, but not enough

Speaking at a function to celebrate his second government’s second anniversary, the prime minister said the United Progressive Alliance had “offered seven years of political stability, social progress, communal harmony, economic growth and increased engagement with nations around the world”. Dr Singh also talked of having made growth “inclusive”, and mentioned the enactment of various “rights” — to information, employment, education and soon to food. Among the challenges, the prime minister mentioned fiscal correction, inflation control, energy and food security, environmental sustainability and increased inequalities. Towards the end, Dr Singh brought up the subject on everyone’s minds: corruption and governance.

 

As a summing-up of the situation, this is fair enough and credit should be given for achieving substantive results in a difficult and complex country. However, it is interesting that the prime minister chose to focus on seven years rather than the two — during which there have arguably been more minuses than pluses. Observers would have also noted that the prime minister was surprisingly silent on the Maoist problem, which has grown during his tenure, becoming (as Dr Singh has himself said on another occasion) the most serious internal security problem faced by the country. Critics will also aver that some of the achievements (engagement with other nations, political stability and – if you leave aside Gujarat – even communal harmony) could have been laid claim to by the previous Vajpayee government as well. Indeed, the transition to rapid growth happened in that government’s last year, and the Singh government has not done enough with regard to economic reform to ensure further rapid growth. If anything, the big ideas are those identified with Sonia Gandhi, like the national rural employment guarantee programme and the law on the right to information. Indeed, at the second anniversary celebrations on Sunday, it was left to Sonia Gandhi to make the firm assertion that the Lok Pal, land acquisition and other key Bills would be passed in the monsoon session of Parliament.

There is legitimate room for debate as to whether some of the government’s major initiatives are unmixed blessings. The new laws on education have come in for heavy criticism from several quarters, and the proposed right to food carries with it the threat of upsetting the food economy by simply promising to do too much. Even the rural employment guarantee programme, while having a positive impact on rural wages and therefore on poverty, might have raised the costs of farming to a counter-productive degree — especially since the majority of farmers do not benefit directly from the increase in food procurement prices. The key issue on which the government has to make up its mind, when it comes to social security measures, is whether to provide for cash transfers or to intervene directly in markets and attempt physical delivery of goods and services — or, more correctly, to determine what is an effective combination of the two modes of amelioration.