The Hindu Business Line : Through a prism

The Prime Minister, Dr Manomohan Singh, has once again retreated into his academic shell, giving vent to thoughts which are a professor’s delight but which, really, have no value whatever to practising politicians.

Addressing a conference on Federalism in New Delhi on Monday, he spoke about the functioning of a political system in coalition conditions and one in a non-coalition set-up, touching upon the collective perception of national interest and implementing policies in its favour. Among other things, he said it needed to be thought out whether “a multi-party model where parties with varying national reach and many with a limited sub-national reach is capable of providing unity of purpose that nation-States have to often demonstrate”. He added: “Sometimes, the resolution to the problems acquires an excessively political hue, and narrow political considerations, based on regional or sectional loyalties and ideologies, can distort the national vision and sense of collective purpose”.

Proposed nuclear pact

Of course, the immediate provocation for the Prime Minister’s comments is the problems which the proposed nuclear agreement with the US is currently facing, his considered view (as reported) being that the deal was being opposed “at the cost of national interest”. Dr Singh has argued that the country needs “to take lessons from those nations which have successfully concluded similar deals with the US”.

Predictably, those at the receiving end have not let the grass grow under their feet, even for a moment. They have made two important points. The first is that the Indian Republic has truly and firmly entered the age of coalition Governments. Secondly, they have homed in on the Prime Minister, saying that instead of theorising on the merits and demerits of different forms of Government, unitary or otherwise, he should shed light on how the “contending and often conflicting aspirations” of coalition partners should be reconciled so that, at the end of the exercise, it is the furtherance of “national interest” that is attained.

‘National interest’

There can be no two views on this governance imperative, but the core problem, one feels, lies elsewhere. What precisely is the “national interest” in the eyes of the Congress Party, the BJP and the other smaller parties, all of which taken together form the Indian political kaleidoscope? The problem is that there are bound to be differences in the interpretation (even though there is a fundamental over-arching agreement on the point that all policies should “strengthen” the nation both domestically and in the world at large), the implication being that a special effort should be made to forge a common ground on what “national interest” means in a coalition set-up.

In the days of a one-party Government, the fractured view of “national interest” was not all that important because it was the party in power that called the shots as far as governance was concerned, the political battle of course being conducted in Parliament and outside it on whether the specific partisan ruling-party view of national interest was appropriate for the country or not. But this cannot be so in a coalition regime. If the partners involved have such a disparate view of the concept of national interest then, clearly, governance will suffer, as may be happening today in the case of the UPA regime.

Effective governance

Since effective governance is non-negotiable in the interests of the republic, and since coalitions have to come to stay in the Indian political firmament, this is an issue which needs to be discussed throughout the country in the interests of building an even stronger India in the years to come.