To mark its fourth anniversary in office, the UPA II government has put out a report to highlight its achievements in the last four years. It demonstrates its awareness of how weak its credibility has become. The report seems an exercise by the government merely to satisfy itself. The general election is not all that close at hand. If the Congress gets a drubbing in the four assembly elections in the next few months, the glow of the report will fade away. It is highly unlikely that the Congress will repeat its overwhelming victory in Karnataka also in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Voters are likely to be critical of governments which have failed to deliver and are even charged with robbing the public treasury. The UPA has no doubt brought significant relief in certain areas-the Right to Information and Education, employment and health guarantees for the rural poor, empowerment of women and making governance more transparent and accountable than before. Significant measures have been taken in hand to transfer subsidies directly to the beneficiaries. But it has been too late and often not implemented fully.
The UPA II has to make up for considerable lost ground. It will have to accelerate economic reforms, improve relations with neighbours, bring the corrupt to book, reorganise the Congress party in the states and expand the number of its allies to fill the cracks which have occurred. But even the drastic action taken by Sonia Gandhi against two tainted cabinet ministers may not cleanse the UPA’s unstable record. Its only hope lies in the disarray and corruption in the various constituents of the Opposition.