The Hindu Business Line : <I>Corruption and reform </I>

It would appear that, with time, the UPA Government led by the Congress is getting more unstable, the reason being that the coalition partners (both inside and outside the Government) are finding it increasingly difficult to share the same platform given the perceived growingdivergence from the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP).

In recent times, the issue of disinvestment of PSUs has hogged the headlines on the premise that what the Government is doing is not what the NCMP has mandated it to do in the sphere.

Struggles within

Expectedly, there are two very clear sides to the story with votaries of both holding forth that each portrayal is faithful to the NCMP.

Even then there is a large, and growing, dispute among the coalition partners, so much so that the Government has been forced to go back on declared policy announcements for fear of an eventual fall of the Government.

There are people who will say that this is an unhealthy state of affairs vis-à-vis the governance of the country, the major casualty being consistency of policy, a favourable perception of which to the outside world and also to domestic economic interests, is an absolute sine qua non for effective governance.

Certainly, this point of view cannot be ignored, especially today when the private sector, both within the country and outside it, is so very closely involved with generation of the economy's growth impulses.

The other side of the story is that a coalition which is so full of ideological life cannot conceivably turn into an instrument hastening the economic rollback of the nation, the basic assumption here being that all the protagonists involved are politically sensible people, fully aware of the nature of the alternative that is waiting to fill the seat of governance should the present regime fall.

So, very rudimentarily, the upshot is that while the economy may falter because of the preoccupation with "struggle" within the UPA coalition, the "common enemy" will at all cost be kept at bay by last-minute patch-ups of "unbridgeable" differences, thereby denying the principal Opposition from getting into the driver's seat.

Corruption reform

This is the world as it is, but the point of this write-up is to ask why issues of corruption cannot be made the centre-piece of "struggle" within the UPA coalition, making such a move the fundamental plank of the Government's reforms policy — just as privatisation of PSUs and foreign policy have been made the battle-standards of the respective parties in the fray?

After all, inspiration for this line can be drawn directly from the NCMP itself which pledges unambiguously that the UPA regime will "provide a government that is corruption-free, transparent and accountable at all times."

Indeed, the scene in this sphere of public life is so murky that the Supreme Court has been constrained to take a tough line on the subject in a string of pronouncements, the latest being in response to a PIL challenging the continuance of "tainted" Ministers in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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