The Hindu Business Line : Unedifying spectacle

IT DOES not at all look nice for the United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties to be seen constantly bickering in public over various matters of public importance. Interest rate of employee provident fund, foreign direct investment in retail trade, opening the financial and banking sectors, labour reforms, Indo-US relations — a whole spectrum of policies and the modalities of their implementation is becoming the bone of contention. The grumbling and growling of the Left parties are, far from throwing light on issues, unedifying, besides acting as brakes on the Government's actions at crucial moments. They also look like adopting double standards when they seem to have no problem with the approaches of the United Front in West Bengal (or of the hard-line communist regime in China, for that matter) which are no different from those the UPA Government wants to pursue in the overall national interest.

As if this is not enough, wars of words and nerves break out between some of the State governments ruled by parties in the Opposition and the Government at the Centre over the funds released or needed for the relief and rehabilitation of victims of natural or man-made disasters, the scope and quantum of plan assistance, delays in granting approval to State schemes and the like.

The state of affairs makes one wonder whether the critics blaming the Prime Minister for not being sufficiently sensitive to the susceptibilities of those he has to carry with him or assertive as the leader when the occasion demands are not right after all. The people are not interested in alibis and excuses, but in the Government, at the Centre and the States getting on with the job and delivering on their commitments. They are disgusted with political parties talking differently from different corners of the mouth with a view to safeguarding their vote banks.

The UPA-Left Coordination Committee will do well to have an extended brainstorming for as long as it takes to hammer out, if necessary, a revised Common Minimum Programme setting at rest all controversies. Similarly, it is worthwhile for the Prime Minister to call a special meeting of the Inter-State Council to discuss issues that are causing, or likely to cause, discord now or in the future, and draw up an agreed frame of reference for harmonious Centre-State relations.

B. S. RAGHAVAN