gopalakrishna

A battle has been won. The unexpected margin of victory of the United Progressive Alliance regime on the Lok Sabha floor last week has generated euphoria in the ranks of the ruling party, won plaudits from industry bodies and pro-reform quarters, sent the Sensex up by hundreds of points, and raised hopes of faster-track economic liberalisation.
It also marks the beginning of the war with the Left Front crying foul, the BJP licking its wounds, BSP chief Mayavati leading the third front and Samajwadi Party aiming to extract its pound of flesh.
Events of the past few weeks indicate no less than epochal changes in the politics of India and may redraw the political battlelines that have existed for many decades.
The triumph in the trust vote also turned out to be a double-edged sword - with dramatic allegations of bribes-for-votes and live television images of wads of cash torpedoing the debate on the nuclear deal as it neared its end, and spoiling the party for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Congress, and its new-found allies.
The political drama featuring slush funds and muscle power will have far-reaching implications that go well beyond who won or lost the numbers’ game and whether TV images of currency-waving MPs have tarred the image of Indian democracy.
It is too early to say who are the real winners and losers in this peculiarly sordid political drama. What lies ahead, during the run-up to the 15th general election due in April-May 2009, will unfold painfully through the aggressive political campaigns, the unpredictable realignments, the fierce polemics, and the half-hearted pursuit of the truth behind the charges of vote-buying.
That there is never a dull moment in Indian politics is a dictum that applies more than ever to the present.
The political turmoil and the ultimate result of the trust vote underscored both the political difficulties of enabling the nuclear deal as well as the government’s resolve in pursuing the agreement to its end. The government’s ‘capacity to do things’ has now moved from a somewhat singular entity of the Left parties to an amorphous medley of individual and unpredictable interest groups.
The trust vote has ended one phase of political uncertainty, but this does not mean that the prime minister will have a smooth sail with his policies and programmes. He has now to manage a new group of excitable allies and a new set of political equations. The question doing the rounds is how long will the spoils of the victorious trust vote last?
The trust vote also betrayed that there have been tectonic shifts in the political landscape with some of the protagonists finding themselves in a changed role. Even though she ended up on the losing side, BSP chief Mayawati has registered a ‘pyrrhic defeat’.
Mayawati has managed to turn herself into an anti-UPA political pivot. This time the ragtag regional forces have huddled around someone in a far better position than any of them. Forgetting for a moment the complex brand of politics that Mayawati practises, the sight of CPM’s Prakash Karat in happy consanguinity with N Chandrababu Naidu, the man who kept the NDA government alive for a full term and refused to vote against the NDA when a confidence motion was debated and voted on the question of the post-Godhra riots in 2002, is nothing but comical.
As for the BJP, the trust vote has left it scarred and demoralised. The many defections from the saffron ranks must be galling for a political organisation that hoped to come to power after the next general election.
The lashings and thrashings that passed for a debate exposed the mental calibre of our MPs. The nuclear deal’s promise of benefits was a non-issue. So was the expectation of additional foreign investment of up to $40bn over the next 15 years. No one examined Manmohan Singh’s assertion that the deal will increase nuclear generation ten-fold and end the almost daily power cuts. What do you expect from the jailbirds and invalids, the bribe-givers and bribe-takers who cared nothing about nitty-gritty issues?
But amidst the darkness, there is some light. In a debate marked by bitterness, one speech stood out: Omar Abdullah’s passionate espousal of patriotism as an Indian and Kashmiri Muslim. For all the drama of his delivery, Abdullah’s speech coolly skewered both the Left parties who set themselves up as certificating authorities of secularism, and the BJP for exploiting the Amarnath issue. And like the best speeches, he scored his own points while making a forceful case for the way Indian Muslims are treated like a ventriloquist’s dummies. He also had the courage to admit that he had made a mistake by not resigning from the NDA government after the Gujarat riots. He set the tone for honest moral cleansing, an example his senior colleagues in the House would do well to follow.
Now that the government has passed the floor test and is no longer dependent on the Left for support, it’s imperative that it makes up for time lost and gets on with the business of governance. There are pressing tasks ahead for the government. Tackling inflation has to be the highest priority. The country can’t afford to be rudderless at this crucial time. There are signs of an economic slowdown now, coupled with a sharp rise in inflation rates.
Fiscal deficits are going out of whack, leading international rating agency Fitch to revise India’s local currency outlook from stable to negative. Standard and Poor’s is considering lowering India’s rating to below investment grade. If that happens it would lower investor confidence in the economy and further dim India’s growth outlook. That’s at a time when the draft National Employment Policy of the government has projected that the Indian economy must grow at 12.3% a year in order to eliminate joblessness by 2012.
The government can now press ahead with long-delayed reforms. It can open up insurance and retail, pass the pension reforms Bill, list public sector units for disinvestment. Many of the reforms had been held up because of opposition by the Left. The UPA must take advantage of its newly acquired ‘independence’ to push these through to revive investor interest and put the economy on a faster, steeper growth trajectory.

__________________
[SIZE="2"][/size]