By Tarunkumar Singhal, Raman Jokhakar, Chartered Accountants
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The second UPA government is observing its third anniversary. The second of those three years saw rampant and large-scale corruption emerge as a hot-button issue. The third and latest year has been disastrous for the economy. So the two principal attributes credited to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — as a man of probity and as the author of economic reforms — have ceased to be political assets for the government. At the heart of the government’s problems is the dyarchy that prevails, something which the Westminster system of parliamentary government is simply not equipped to deal with. Political power rests with Sonia Gandhi, and she therefore has an important say in what must happen. In practice, therefore, the prime minister serves so long as he enjoys her confidence, and he has to consult her on ministerial appointments. More importantly, he cannot dispense with any of them if he so chooses. This fundamentally undermines his authority in the Cabinet, a situation which many ministers have exploited to thumb their noses at him.
Many other things are wrong with this government. For a start, its leading lights are simply too old. The prime minister will be 80 in a few months, while the foreign minister is already 80. Mr. Mukherjee is 77, and Mr. Antony 71. Among those exercising the sovereign functions of the state, only Mr. Chidambaram (67) is below 70. In the Cabinet as a whole, 15 of 34 ministers are 70 or older. Any government with so many old people, who have little to look forward to other than political survival for a few more years, is likely to be short on energy and initiatives, and tied to old ways of thinking. It also matters that most of the stalwarts in the Cabinet are political lightweights who have no real clout with voters in their states.
A lightweight prime minister has around him a bunch of other lightweights. This may have to do with the nature of the Congress party — if it is to be protected and preserved as family property, the party’s only real vote-getters must be from the Gandhi family; and young ministers like Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot cannot be allowed to flower too early or they might outshine Rahul Gandhi. It is frequently said that the bane of this government has been its recalcitrant allies. Perhaps, but how much of the failure to carry them along rests with the Congress? How often has the UPA actually met as an alliance? Why does it not have a common minimum programme, which everyone has agreed on? Why is there no effective system of discussion and consultation? Is it simply because the leading lights of the UPA lack political ability — the prime minister is reticent if not retiring, the home minister gets people’s backs up, and the finance minister has too much on his plate to focus on anything in particular? In any case, the ministerial mathematics tells its own story: 28 out of 34 Cabinet posts are with the Congress, as also all seven positions of minister of state with independent charge; that’s a score of 35 out of 41. Of the six posts with five allies, the government has got almost unstinting support from Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress, Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference and Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal. When push came to shove, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam too played along, even allowing its Cabinet representation to shrink. The sole problem case can be said to be Mamata Banerjee. Is this really an unmanageable situation, or a failure of management?
