UPA merely a Post-Poll Opportunist Arrangement
by Nalin Kohli
India, the world’s largest democracy, is currently in the midst of elections. In [just a week] from now, on May 16, the final outcome and verdict of the people will be known. The BJP, as the principal Opposition party, has been spearheading the national debate and exposure on the list of failures of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. And so dismal has been the track record of the UPA government under the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, that today erstwhile allies like Mr Lalu Prasad, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and even Mr Sharad Pawar, are all keeping their post-poll options open and shying away from accepting Dr Manmohan Singh as their prime ministerial candidate. The so-called ‘United’ Progressive Alliance has today clearly become a (Dis)United Progressive Alliance. So where has this government gone wrong?
Let me broadly enumerate some of the principal failures of the UPA government. Firstly, the unprecedented rise in the prices of all essential commodities of daily use has severely burdened the common man as never before. Wheat, rice, sugar, milk, edible oil, vegetables, dals, the prices of every commodity of daily use has increased between 50% and 100% over the past five years. And then to top it, cooking gas is no longer available on demand. Ask any middle-class person, and they will not hesitate in saying that their food or kitchen bill has dramatically increased between 2004 and 2009. So why the so-called ‘dream team’ of economists and financial experts like Dr Manmohan Singh, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Mr Chidambaram could not manage to control prices? Their only defence is the low inflation rate based on the Wholesale Price Index or WPI. But what they cleverly don’t speak about is the more relevant Consumer Price Index or CPI which is what really matters in this case.
The second critical issue is that of rising unemployment. Even government statistics are forced to admit that jobs are being lost. According to some industry sources, over one crore or ten million jobs have already been lost in the last few months alone. Then key infrastructure projects started by the BJP-led NDA government under Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee like the National Highways Development Project and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana have slowed down. While roads increased at a pace of 11 km per day under the NDA, in five years this pace of progress has slowed down by at least 50 per cent.
It is indeed unfortunate that an economy of surpluses in 2004 under the BJP-led NDA has today been reduced to one of shortages under the Congress-led UPA. While the UPA government was quick to take credit when the going was good for the economy, they have been even faster in pushing the blame on the global meltdown to deflect criticism from their own lacklustre performance.
And finally on the security front, with the Taliban literally at our doorstep, this government has politicised the fight against terror and has been seen as unwilling to take the required measures to strengthen our security apparatus and send a strong message to the perpetrators of terror especially from across the border. The first step and so-called achievement of the UPA government was to disband POTA, a strong anti-terror law. Then after nearly five years of repeated terrorist strikes all over the country and including serial bomb blasts in Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur, Bangalore, Varanasi, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and again 26/11 in Mumbai, the government finally passed an anti-terror law at the end of its tenure. And while the Congress-ruled states like Maharasthra and Delhi were allowed to have their own strong anti-terror laws like MCOCA, the UPA government prevented the BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to have similar laws like MCOCA. Why this disparity? Is the security of every Indian irrespective of where they live not of paramount importance?
Elections are fought on the performance of the incumbent government. And the BJP as a political party and Mr L K Advani as the prime ministerial candidate have obviously been keen to focus the national debate on such relevant issues. But the Congress party, for obvious reasons, would like to deflect the debate in other directions and not discuss price rise, security, unemployment etc or even seek to brush under the carpet all the help rendered by the UPA government between 2004 and 2009 to the Bofors-tainted Ottavio Quattrocchi or confusing it in legal phraseology.
I have no hesitation in saying that today it can be conclusively stated that the UPA was merely a post-poll arrangement of opportunism. And irrespective of diversionary tactics, the UPA in general and the Congress party in particular, will not be able to escape answering the people. And that’s what elections are all about -making political persons and parties responsible to the voters for their performance. As far as the BJP is concerned, we firmly believe and respect the fact that Indian democracy has matured to a level that people will cast their votes with a clear intention to reject the poor performance of the last five years.
(This article was first published on IBNLive on May 4, 2009.)
(Nalin Kohli is the BJP’s national media convener. He was a prime-time English news anchor on Doordarshan and an independent producer and director of television programmes. A history graduate with a post-graduate diploma in management and law degree, Kohli is a fellow of many prestigious fellowships including the Eisenhower Fellowship, East West Centre, Salzburg Seminar and Malaysia International Visitor Programme.)