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Date 10th September'10

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http://www.pteducation.com/drishti.aspx
CONTENTS

The following pages contain

¾ Article on:
• India's disappointing government

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 India's disappointing government

The economy is powering on, but the Congress-led coalition is

squandering an opportunity to improve India

The weightlifting auditorium has a leaky roof. The athletes’ village has no
kitchen. Stagnant monsoon water, abuzz with dengue-carrying
mosquitoes, collects at most of the stadiums being hurriedly built for the
Delhi Commonwealth games, which are due to begin on October 3rd. The
security arrangements, in terrorism-stricken India, are shot to pieces
because of 24-hour processions of workmen at most venues. Manmohan
Singh, the prime minister, reiterates the official line that these will be the
“best games ever”. That may depend on how you define “best”.

This shambles, for which corruption, feuding ministries, sapping

bureaucracy and shoddy workmanship are all to blame, does not matter to
many Indians. Athletics is not cricket. And few know much about their
country’s image abroad. Yet it is depressing, not least because it mirrors
how large parts of India are run.

When Mr Singh’s government, a coalition dominated by the Congress

party, came to power in May last year it was considered to be in a strong
position to improve matters. Congress had won a general election
convincingly, letting it shake off a few of the troublesome partners,
including Communist parties, who dogged its outgoing coalition
administration. Its main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party, was deflated by electoral defeat. And Congress’s leaders, Mr Singh
and Sonia Gandhi, the party chief, are highly regarded.

The government has at least managed the economy steadily. On August

31st it said that output had grown by 8.8% in the second quarter
compared with the same quarter last year. This figure was made especially
rosy by the relative gloom of a year earlier. Yet it puts India back in its
wished-for realm of 9% growth, and it is based on strong growth in job-
creating manufacturing, which increased by 12.4%.

But almost everywhere else the results are disappointing. The government
has brought almost none of the economic reform India needs. And it has
done no more in other pressing areas, like infrastructure and health care,
than its predecessor. It may even have jeopardised one of that
government’s biggest achievements, a civil nuclear co-operation deal with
America that was expected to lead to big investments in nuclear energy.
On August 30th India’s upper house passed a nuclear-liability law that will
make suppliers of nuclear fuels and related gear liable for 80 years in the
event of any malfunction. That may well deter them.

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Worse, the government’s poor management of several crises makes it
seem incompetent. These include violent separatist protests in Kashmir,
where an 11-year-old boy was killed by police on August 30th, becoming
the 65th victim of the year, and a worsening Maoist insurgency in east
India, which has cost almost 900 lives this year.

The easy response to this disappointment is to blame unrealistic

expectations. Despite hopes bandied about by businessmen, there never
was much prospect of this leftist government bringing economic reform to
India’s statist financial sector or protected retail industry.

But even when the government has tried bits of reform it has often got
stuck. The biggest, an effort to prune the country’s dreadful thicket of
indirect taxes into a tidier form, an all-India Goods and Services Tax, has
been pushed back by a year, to April 2012. Another, to scrap a petrol
subsidy, announced in June to many loud public protests, has been
followed by only one rise in petrol prices, which suggests they are not yet
free.

The government’s inability to make itself work better is a more basic

failing—richly evident in the games’ foul-up—for which Congress, in charge
of the Delhi state government, is especially guilty. To address a big
weakness of the previous government, road-building, an able minister,
Kamal Nath, was appointed. He promised to build an average of 20km a
day, but this looks unlikely.

In education, another priority, early progress has slowed. The education

minister, Kapil Sibal, has promised an array of improvements, including
universal primary education, partly provided for through private schooling.
This has been enshrined in law, yet its implementation is bogged down.
State governments are against any change that the centre will not fund;
and its negotiating skills are poor.

The man at the wheel

A lack of strong leadership underlies that. Mr Singh’s power is limited.

From her central Delhi bungalow, at 10 Janpath, Mrs Gandhi controls the
government. Ministers also pay more heed to the man expected to be the
next prime minister, her 40-year-old son Rahul, than to the current one.
Yet on the rare occasions when Mr Singh has decided to put his shoulder
to the wheel, it has moved. That explains why the America-India nuclear
deal was passed by the previous government, despite much hostility to it.

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Why Mr Singh, a formidable economist and liberal, has not tried to do
more—especially to calm the crises in Kashmir and the east—is baffling.
But his reluctance to act more vigorously explains why he is rated less
highly at home than abroad. According to Newsweek he is the world leader
“other leaders love”. India Today, by contrast, found that 1% of Indians
consider him their first choice for prime minister.

Mr Gandhi, a late-developer, meanwhile shows little interest in the tough

business of policy. He is devoted to rebuilding Congress, especially in
populous north India; forthcoming state elections, in Bihar in October and
West Bengal next year, will be important tests of his progress. This
ambition also explains Mr Gandhi’s single recent policy statement. After
the government forbade a big mining company, Vedanta, to extract
bauxite from a mountain in Orissa sacred to local tribes, he rushed to
present himself to them, on August 26th, as their “soldier in Delhi”. Indeed
they need one. And the tribal vote, about 8% of the total, would certainly
be helpful to Congress.

But it would be more useful for India if Mr Gandhi could get a long-stalled
land-acquisition bill through parliament. It would redefine the terms under
which the government can acquire land for industry, an urgent need, in a
poor, crowded country.

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