By Indranil Banerjea
The reshuffle has come and gone. If the idea was to change the conversation in the bazaars and village chaupals, it failed. People do not care. A government that has lost credibility cannot win back the public trust by moving a few square pegs from one set of round holes to another set of round holes. It no longer matters. Whatever desperate measures the UPA government might take between now and the next poll — witness rolling back the price hike in the cooking gas post-haste within a couple of hours — its electoral rout is unavoidable. Aam aadmi can forgive political corruption but a back-breaking price-rise will necessarily result in a popular backlash.
And price-rise is something this government will find very hard to contain. Levies on essential goods cannot be rolled back. Indeed, given the high fiscal deficit, Chidambaram needs to mop up as much revenue as he can for him to have enough to allocate more and more funds to Sonia Gandhi’s pet vote-winning schemes in the election season fast descending upon us. Besides, he needs to contain the fisc to impress the Central bank for the latter to be able to reduce the key policy rate.
Now, he can do that by judiciously cutting back the huge outgo on subsidising both fuel and fertilizer. But which government has the guts to challenge the vested interests, especially when the general election is only 18 months away. Already, it may have invited trouble from the powerful farmers’ lobby by deciding not to raise the minimum support price for wheat this season. When you have raised the MSP for wheat all these years through the decade, often improving upon the price recommended by a body of experts, keeping it unchanged ahead of the polls is to court trouble.
The decision might have stemmed from the government’s anxiety to ensure stability in the price of atta (wheat flour) at the retail level, but, unfortunately, when every commodity is caught in the general price-spiral it is hardly likely that the staple wheat flour will remain unaffected. Unless there is a cap on the general price-line, wheat prices will move in sympathy with other goods regardless of whether its growers are paid the old MSP for their produce.
Truly, Chidambaram’s is an unenviable task, though he can always be relied upon to project a doer’s image thanks to his felicity with words and his hold over a section of the English language media. But what he cannot do is to contain the price-rise. For that structural changes in the economy are essential.
Incidentally, the other day on one of the nightly television channels a compulsive apologist of the prime minister was waxing eloquent about the insightful ministerial changes, emphasising how key ministries in the infrastructure sector, be it railways, highways, power, shipping, telecom, et al, had been entrusted in the safe hands of wise and efficient ministers. In fact, he mildly chided the always well-spoken and gentlemanly Yogendra Yadav, lately of the India Again Corruption movement, for ignoring that cardinal message of the reshuffle.
What the PM’s self-appointed media adviser failed to point out was as to where the additional funds for new roads, power plants, shipyards, et al, will come from, given the precarious state of the public finances. But, then, when you set out to impress the people in authority, you don’t have to sound convincing, even logical. The truth is this government has ruined the nation’s finances, wasting a lot on non-plan heads as also on throwing away good money on poorly-targeted welfare schemes. When you cannot even ensure that funds meant for the disabled, and distributed in-house by one of your own, are well-directed, how can you undertake judicious distribution of tens of thousands of crores of rupees earmarked for the employment guarantee and other entitlement schemes aimed at winning goodwill for the ruling party?
Aside from the mess on the economic front, look at the administrative and political handling of the government? It speaks volumes for the stewardship of the defence ministry by Saint Antony that the top generals are yet again engaged in a public spat as to who will succeed the Army chief General Bikram Singh. Former Army chief V.K. Singh had almost pushed the government to the brink, thanks to the peculiar succession plan devised by the cabal of crafty generals in whose hands the do-nothing defence minister had played into so easily. In all fairness, General Singh ought to have been allowed another year as the Army chief. Because injustice was done to him, he has now openly come out against the ruling party. An Army chief usually enjoys high regard among the simple, rural folks, more so in the rugged Haryana and Punjab belt, which accounts for a high percentage of soldiery, present and retired. He is now marshalling public opinion in conjunction with the charismatic Anna Hazare. His call for the dissolution of Parliament might be somewhat over-the-top, though the government after the exit of Mamata Banerjee is clearly in a minority. The retired Army chief does strike a chord with the people because a) he is known to be squeaky clean, and b) the government has failed woefully on multiple fronts.
Meanwhile, the usual suspects who had earlier hyped the ministerial reshuffle are now busy selling the proposed organisational changes in the Congress under the aegis of the allegedly newly assertive Rahul Gandhi. However, it is a mystery as to what the Gandhi junior will do now which he did not do earlier. After all, he was the unquestioned number two in the party regardless of what designation he might sport next. Replacing a few akhbari leaders in the organisational set-up with new ones, albeit relatively younger, is unlikely to revive the party.
The youth brigade does not have the key to the hearts of the masses. In a polity badly fragmented on caste, religion, region and even ethnic lines, any attempt to reinvent the Congress of yore, when it was all things to all men, is bound to come unstuck, especially when both the mother-son duo lacks charisma. The Congress is in terminal decline; it can stay relevant only if it sheds its arrogance and woos various regional leaders in a spirit of genuine cooperation rather than trying to erode their influence through trickery and back-stabbing.
It is a measure of the Congress’ arrogance that Mamata Banerjee is out of the UPA while its loyal ally, M. Karunanidhi is sulking in his tent, ready to dump the coalition given half-a-chance by arch rival Jayalalithaa.
Meanwhile, that chap Subramanian Swamy is behaving quite strangely. He shows little or no understanding of the Congress. Now once you concede that it is a Gandhi-owned family firm, it wouldn’t matter whether it transfers funds to another family-owned company for acquiring plum properties of the long-defunct National Herald or, for that matter, it renders assistance to, say, the indigent members of Sonia Gandhi’s family back home in Italy. The problem with Swamy is that he is yet to come to terms with the real character of the Congress party. INAV