INDEPENDENT INDIA suffering under a SLAVE GOVERNMENT

By Amba Charan Vashishth

The various UPA constituents, including the Congress, drew satisfaction from the fact that Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi did not name any particular ally when he said that UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption as his grandmother and late prime minister Indira Gandhi could do” because of coalition compulsions”.

The new Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan echoing Rahul remarks said that coalition politics was sometimes a hurdle in decision making. “Coalition can be a hindrance and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, he said on January 12.

Never did the country have a government as paralysed and as benumbed to act as we have today, particularly since May 2004, called UPA-II under which the Prime Minister is not able to exercise the kind of authority and leadership he should, in the normal course, on the council of ministers, particularly those belonging to the allies.

It is an accepted principle of the parliamentary democracy that it is the unchallenged prerogative of a prime minister to choose his team in the council of ministers and to allocate portfolios. But that is not the case under the present UPA-II government wherein it is not the prime minister but the alliance party bosses who decide who should be the minister (and of what rank) and which portfolio he/she should hold. The prime minister just faithfully abides by the wishes of the allies on whose support his government subsists.

Even in the case of recalcitrant ministers, like the union minister of chemicals and fertilizer M K Azhagiri, the former communications minister A. Raja, railway minister Mamta Banerjee, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, the prime minister has found himself helpless to act. Mr. Azhagiri has played truant from the parliament and his office for unusually long periods. Despite reports of wrongdoings in communications ministry, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi continued to defend him till the last. Even after Manmohan government was left with no alternative but to show the door to Mr. A. Raja on the eve of presentation of CAG report, Congress had to continue to defend him, even after CBI registered a case and conducted raids on Raja’s residence and interrogated him. The question remains: If Mr. Raja was not even a distant suspect in any crime, why at all was he made to resign? Why was he humiliated by conducting raids on his premises and those of his aides? If we go by the stand of the Congress and the DMK, it appears he has been made a scapegoat and punished for no crime of his.

Whatever explanation the Congress Party may proffer, the message has been well read and taken by the people: In independent India we are at present sufferings the pangs of a government that is slave to the circumstances.

Not in control

About a year back when prices started skyrocketing unusually and the aam aadmi was crying aghast, in irritation the Agriculture and Food Minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, shot back that “I’m no astrologer” when a media person asked Pawar when he expects the prices to fall. But he did behave as an astrologer whose predictions always go wrong when he said a number of times that prices of particular commodities will continue to rise “for another three months” or ease after some time. Our Finance Minister has, on a number of occasions, predicted that inflation and prices will come down in “three-four months” or by the end of the year or so. But each time that didn’t happen.

On January 16, 2011 Mr. Sharad Pawar said that there was a wrong perception (created by media) that the agriculture ministry was responsible for rising prices. In reality, he added, the ministry had no role to play, and that it was entirely dependent on market conditions.

People of the country have voted this government to power to govern and administer and not just to volunteer excuses for non-performance, non –functioning and failures. People are eager to see it work to make their life convenient, easy, safe and secure; they are not interested in excuses.

To rule is easy, said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to govern difficult. Messers Rahul, Sharad Pavar or Prithviraj Chavan have only sent out a message loud and clear: this government is not able to perform and is just drifting by various forces beyond their control. A government must anticipate things and takes corrective steps in advance to meet the situation. If price rise and inflation are “entirely dependent on market conditions”; if UPA government was “not able to control inflation and corruption” because of coalition compulsions; if “coalition can be a hindrance (in taking a decision) and one has to find a way out to make things happen”, does it not mean that at the moment there is no a government worth its salt in power in the country? If not those in power who else “has to find a way out to make things happen”?

A government irresponsible

The stance of the UPA government amounts to the government virtually abdicating its authority, right and capacity to govern and administer “entirely” to “market conditions”. Our democracy too seems to have drifted to being a government by the aam aadmi, of the “market conditions” and forces, and for everybody else except the aam aadmi.

Democracy, good governance and modernity, Emile Lahud has rightly said, cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country. And the words of Thomas Jefferson apply aptly to the present Indian conditions when he said: “Experience hath shown that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”.

The confusion has further been worse confounded by the scenario of utter sense of irresponsibility prevailing in the government. Everybody, the prime minister included, washes his hands of the responsibility for everything wrong taking place under their nose.

Atheist turns believer

About thirty years back, a joke was widely quoted in India A leader from the then USSR which being a communist country did not believe in god, on return from a visit to India told his fellow citizens that he had now come to believe that god does exist there. Curious people asked, “How?” He replied: “There was no government worth the name, yet the country was going. God must be running the government and the country”.

Coalition adharma

Of late, we have come to hear of a new terminology of ‘coalition dharma’ which means taking every constituent of the alliance along, giving weightage to each one’s point of view and respecting their feelings which many a time are in conflict with each other. But what is of supreme importance – the ‘coalition dharma’ or the need to govern and perform in the interest of the people for which they had been mandated? Whether it is fighting corruption or terrorism, bringing down prices and inflation or the like, it is the ‘coalition dharma’ that appears to be a stumbling block for any action by the government. It cannot be a dharma but only adharma that can stand in conflict with the interests of the nation and ushers in sufferings for the common people.

Government for what?

If the present UPA dispensation is not to work to solve the burning problems of the country; if it has not to help the aam aadmi come out of his present state of suffering, and the administration has just to drift on its own, what for do we need an army of ministers at the Centre and in States -- just to enjoy the fruits of power at the cost of the people for whom they are not working? In that case a political system without a government would be much more desirable, as it would, at least, save the people of thousands of crores of money which they can spend on themselves to usher in their own prosperity.