The Hindu Business Line : Three years of UPA Government

It would seem that, other than the presentation of a score-card to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson, Ms Sonia Gandhi, by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the hosting of a dinner by him for the Alliance partners, there has not been any celebration on a noticeable scale to mark the completion of three years in office by the UPA Government on May 22. It is just as well.

The performance of the Government has at best been patchy, and its functioning catatonic. No doubt, it gets full marks for putting on the statute book the Right to Information Act, a potent instrument in the hands of the people to enforce accountability and transparency in the working of the government. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is yet another far-reaching initiative that combines within itself the twin objectives of creation of durable assets and assured flow of income to rural households. The tempo built up in the economy by the Bharat Nirman package of schemes is also substantial.

Barring these, the Government has been giving the impression of bumbling along a bumpy road, different parts of it acting on their own in different directions, with little coordination or cohesion.

The absence of clear-sightedness and planning is evident precisely in respect of those issues that needed to be handled with the utmost finesse and sophistication.

The examples readily coming to mind are the reservation imbroglio and the warring among the Southern States over the sharing of river waters. In the people's mind, the Human Resource Minister, Mr Arjun Singh, is awkwardly ploughing his own furrow on the reservation question.

Nobody would have minded that if only he had a ready plan to meet the operational and judicial challenges.

To the contrary, he appeared to be bungling in a state of confusion.

On river waters, the Government at the Centre chose to remain a detached bystander, leaving it to the States concerned to slug it out among themselves. The ugly happenings surrounding the establishment of the Special Economic Zones and the acquisition of land for the purpose were indisputably the result of its inability to think through the repercussions while being overzealous in pushing the concept.

Wobbly progression

Whether it is the rise in the prices of essential items of daily consumption, the continuing controversy over the nuclear deal with the US, or the faltering over economic reforms, the picture is one of a government that is not sure of where it is heading and how it is going to head there.

One of the reasons for the wobbly progress of the UPA could also be the demoralisation caused to the main constituent of the Alliance, the Congress, by a series of electoral reverses in Assembly and municipal polls in a number of States capped by the dismal showing in the UP elections. This is bound to detract from the overall effectiveness of the Alliance in facing up to the pulls and pressures both from within and from Left parties supporting it from the outside.

Like it or not, there can be no appraisal of the UPA Government's record without taking account of the nature of the leadership provided by Dr Manmohan Singh.

While encomiums are showered on him for his professional attainments and his personal integrity, there are not many who see him as an effective Prime Minister. It is indeed a mystery how he himself has been putting up this long with the repulsive features of coalition politics that must be anathema to him. Whether he will last the remaining two years or, at some point, find the situation too suffocating to continue, is anybody's guess.

B. S. RAGHAVAN