The Hindu Business Line : A pause in reforms?

The UPA Government has just completed three years in office, and now two remain before fresh elections to the Lok Sabha — that is, if the Manmohan Singh Government is allowed to run its full course. However, as the world knows, this may not turn out to be the case. The Congress itself may ask for a dissolution and call for early elections. Alternatively, for their own reasons, the party's allies may decide to pull the rug from under the feet of the Congress, individually or collectively, before 2009.

What all this suggests is that the next two years will be politically even more charged than has been the case over the past three years. What does this mean for policy, especially those on reforming the economic structure of the country?

Spreading Prosperity

On reforms, the National Common Minimum Programme of the UPA Government, adopted in May 2004, says: "The UPA reiterates its abiding commitment to economic reforms with a human face, that stimulates growth, investment and employment. Further reforms are needed and will be carried out in agriculture, industry and services. The UPA's economic reforms will be oriented primarily to spreading and deepening rural prosperity, to significantly improving the quality of public systems and delivery of public services, to bringing about a visible and tangible difference in the quality of life of ordinary citizens of our country."

During the past three years, the Government has tried its hand at working out and implementing `reforms with a human face', much of which, however, has had to pass through a rigorous process of criticism and revision initiated by people and parties within the alliance and others supporting it from outside. Briefly, because of such opposition, the Manmohan Singh Government has had to strain at the sinews to get its way on a number of reform measures, other reforms being stalled and cold-storaged.

The point is, if this has happened during the first three years of the Government's normal life — a period when so-called people-unfriendly policies (which are nevertheless indispensable for the economy's benefit from the long-term point of view) can usually be adopted without fear of an electoral backlash at the Lok Sabha level — it will be only normal to expect that the remaining two years will see a more `people-friendly' Government at the Centre. The policy-profile of such a period will be increasingly coloured by the adoption of `sops', the ultimately objective of which would be to make the electorate more prone to vote for the Congress and its allies in the next Lok Sabha elections.

Back-seat for reforms

In other words, reforms are more likely than not to be given the back-seat in official policy-making. While this strategy may make political sense in the short-run, can the same thing be said at the level of economic policy-formulation? If reforms are important for the continued growth of the national economy, will the process already underway be seriously affected by an induced famine of such policies in the coming two years?

More fundamental from the point of view of the functioning of our parliamentary democracy is the associated ethical issue of trying to get votes by putting up a false face before the people just before an election. The response will probably be: Who cares? Let us get into the driver's seat first, and then we will see. As the adage goes, one cannot fool all the people all the time!

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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