Dr.Man Mohan Singh and Lal Krishna Advani are the prime ministerial candidates of the Congress Party and the BJP respectively for the general election which is under way in India. One of them would be the Prime Minister of India soon after May 16, 2009 unless of course none of the two parties get more than 150 seats in the next parliament. In that case, there would be a scramble for the top post from among motley crowd in what is called the Third Front or the Fourth Front which consist of mostly regional parties with limited vision and unlimited ambition. This of course would lead for another general election in the next two years – a case of history repeating itself as happened during 1990's.
As the leaders of the big two parties, it was in the fitness of things that there should be a discussion and even a confrontation between the two leaders. Instead of accepting the challenge and an opportunity to uphold his five-year term, Dr.Singh chose to spurn it and made it an issue of debates and discussions in newspapers and TV. He said that he does not want to give Advani the dignity of a discussion on a face-to-face basis as is being done by presidential candidates in USA forgetting that Advani is the Leader of the Opposition and it is the privilege of the electorate make one or the other the Prime Minister. Instead he made some comments on Kandahar episode and the attack on the Parliament during the NDA regime as if the NDA's performance is on trial. Some of the newspapers have called it ' hit back at Advani' for his repeated remark that Dr.Singh is the 'weakest' Prime Minister of India. Another commentator has written a piece under the title, ' Mouse that roared'. All these have not enhanced the Indian democracy.
These comments avoid the main issue at this election – that is, the record of the five-year term of the UPA and who should get the mandate for the next five-years. Let us draw a balance-sheet of the UPA.
What are the achievements of UPA under the leadership of Dr.Man Mohan Singh ? UPA had alloted a huge amount of money ( Rs.175,000 crore) for what is called Bharat Nirman – rural roads network, rural employment, rural connectivity, rural housing and rural electrification. There was also another mission called Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission ( JNNURM). Both of them are called flagship initiatives of UPA but unfortunately both of them have failed to reach targets set by the government.
" UPA govt strike rate - all targets missed" is the headline of a report in DNA, ( 23/2 /09). " Under rural electrification, only 13.8% targeted rural households including BPL ( below poverty line) families, were provided connections according to government data, as on February 16 this year." It further states that only 19.3% BPL families targeted benefited. As far as rural roads ( new and upgraded) are concerned, only 34% was achieved ( 1.63 lakh km as against 3.40 lakh km ) till December,2008. Water supply provided to 4.64 lakh habitations as against the target of 6.04 lakh ( almost 70%). Only 5 million hectares of additional irrigation potential has been created while the target is 10 million ( 50%). The rural employment scheme has been found to have large leakages.
Similar is the case with JNNURM. Under the headline, " Mission Impossible ", another report in DNA ( 17/3/09) says, : "Only about 10% of the money sanctioned for the UPA government's flagship Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission used".
It is clear that UPA has not been able to galvanise it bureaucracy to deliver results to the people. Former Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi had made the famous observation that only 15 paise from a rupee alloted to rural development reaches the intended beneficiaries 25 years ago. Now we have new technologies such as computers and internet, new awareness among the people who have promoted many orgnaisations to help rural and poor people. The government has failed use them to reach the poor.
The Indian government has to create an institution to supervise all expenditure. Recently, writing in the New York Times under title, "Super size risk – big government needs big oversight ", Nobel-Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, has written, " How did F.D.R.manage to make a big government so clean? A large part of the answer is that oversight was built into New Deal programmes from the beginning. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), in particular, had a powerful, independent "division of progress investigation" devoted to investigating complaints of frauds. This division was so diligent that in 1940 when a Congressional sub-committee investigated the WPA it couldn't find a single serious irregularity that the division has missed." (Indian Express, 12/12/08). Huge Dalton, Chancellor of Exchequer under the Labour government of Clement Atlee had said long ago that the problem of Public Finance is not raising the revenue but spending it. How true !
Coming to other issues which came up during the last five years, we have to mention Indo-US Nuclear Agreement which was touted as the solution to the India's energy problem is missing as one of the achievements of UPA. Dr.Man Mohan Singh was ready to sacrifice his office for the sake of this agreement. We have all seen the bundle of notes exhibited in the Loka Sabha as the price for voting for the motion – which was neither confirmed or nor refuted as the bribe upto now - was a black mark on his administration. Many still believe that India's defense as well as energy security has been compromised. Surprisingly, Dr.Singh did not have any reservation in abandoning his reform agenda during his tenure to please the Left.
Dr. Singh's espousal of reservation for poor among the minorities in educational institutions and administration rather than all poor is likely to create resentment among the poor in the majority community. The increase in the reservation for OBCs ( other backward communities) at higher educational institutions is more a vote-bank politics than a measure for equity. UPA government had ministers who were accused of corruption and even murder.
During Dr.Singh's regime terrorists had a field day. Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedbad, Jaipur, Varanasi and Delhi bore the brunt of terrorist attacks and hardly anybody has been punished for them. UPA has proudly claimed that the abolition of POTA ( The Prevention of Terrorist Act ) as its achievement.
In short, Dr.Man Mohan Singh did not bring any major change in India during the last five years. It has continued to be a soft state. He was in office, not in power, as The Economist observed on is regime. The power was with the party chief as in a communist dispensation. The government was cobbled together not for public welfare but to enjoy power. Dr.Singh's intentions may be good but it has not brought any tangible benefit to the people.
Now let us look at the credentials of both the contenders. Dr.Man Mohan Singh and Lal Krishna Advani are men of destiny. They have many things in common – both were born in that part of British India which is now known as Pakistan ; both have a look of the common man glorified by the famous cartoonist Laxman and incidentally a well-known comic actor mimics them brilliantly on TV programmes ; both have changed the destiny of India – Dr.Singh with the liberalisation of Indian economy in 1991 as the Finance Minister of India to unleash growth potential of the country and Advani, as the political leader who changed the contours of Indian politics by creating a bi-polar polity for India and taking BJP to power through the Rath-yatra from Somanath to Ayodhya which gave expression to the suppressed and silent Hindu anger and agony inflicted during the Middle Ages. These two events led to two other important consequences - India's phenomenal economic growth after liberalisation and India's joining the exclusive Atomic Club. They have given India a seat at the high table of the world.
Dr.Man Mohan Singh has proved his credentials as an economist but has failed to lead from the front.L.K.Advani, on the other hand, has proved to be a leader who knows the pulse of the people and can think laterally,not just depend on conventional wisdom.Now the ball is in the people's court and they would decide who should be given the mandate !
April 22,2009.
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