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What's really up with the govt of UPA?

What's really up with the govt of UPA?

Author: R K Nandan
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: May 21, 2006
URL: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1540119.cms

On May 14, while inaugurating in Delhi the complex of the Defence Research & Development Organisation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for the creating of a favourable working environment to retain within the country the best talent in cutting edge departments.

"We have to think of new ways to stem the haemorrhage of scientific talent from our technology departments in a highly competitive environment," he said.

On the same day, Union HRD minister Arjun Singh was declaring before the media that there could be no relook at the proposal to extend the ambit of reservation for the country's premier educational institutions and Central universities from the existing 22.5% for SCs and STs to 49.5% to also take care of the OBCs.

Which, in other words, contradicted what his PM had been saying since the proposal articulated by Arjun Singh meant that one out of every two students admitted into the country's premier educational institutions would not be getting in on the basis of merit!

Arjun Singh even did his bit to add insult to injury by making the point that the PM's eight-member Knowledge Commission, which had come out against the extension of reservation by a majority of six to two, was behaving as if it was above the Constitution of India.

All political parties had, Singh added, recently approved an amendment to the Constitution which was an enabling clause in terms of extending the ambit of reservation to 49.5%.

And so what if Knowledge Commission member and Centre for Policy Research director Pratap Bhanu Mehta indicated that the enabling clause did not automatically require the government to extend quotas and that it could not be used as a pretext!

However, Arjun Singh was not the only politician trying to undermine non-partisan bodies set up by the PM like the Knowledge Commission. Round about the same time, in an atavistic throwback to the days of the licence-permit raj, Union commerce minister Kamal Nath was threatening to crack the whip by imposing a ban on the export of cement unless prices of the commodity came down.

Apart from ignoring the fact that only six per cent of the commodity was being exported and that prices had risen because of the basic economic laws of supply and demand, Kamal Nath was also pre-empting the role of the Competition Commission which had been set up to precisely look at all attempts by all industries at cartelisation through price-fixing and to take remedial action.

On May 13, Kamal Nath had also threatened India's entire industrial private sector by warning that the government could consider mandatory measures unless companies recruited a greater proportion of those belonging to the SCs, STs and OBCs.

Kamal Nath also urged India's private sector to set up more ventures in those districts which had a dominant proportion of SCs, STs and OBCs! Surely, if any of the Union ministers could claim to be aware of the 21st century winds of change and the need to be globally competitive, it is Kamal Nath who has attended so many multilateral meetings at the WTO and elsewhere over the last few years in his capacity as India's commerce minister.

Surely, if any minister is aware that China is a far more attractive FDI destination than India in this era of global competitivenes, it is Kamal Nath. Surely, Kamal Nath would be aware that it is growth and growth alone which can liberate the masses in India from the shackles of poverty and backwardness.

So why are India's ministers like Arjun Singh and Kamal Nath articulating policies which could take the country two paces back for every single step it progresses. The answer has to be seen in the malaise of vote-bank politics.

If even an otherwise sound Union finance minister like P Chidambaram can state on the campaign trail in TN that it is sadhayam -- Tamil for feasible -- to gift colour TVs to the masses below the poverty-line, that only indicates that India's politicians are engaged in a lemming-like rush to strike the lowest common denominator (LCD) when it comes to ensuring their success at the polls even at the cost of mortgaging the country's economic future!

If Chuchill defined democracy as not an undiluted good but a lesser evil, it was because he was aware of the damage which could be done by demagogues like Adolf Hitler who, on the basis of one electoral win, managed to make even the Holocaust a state objective!

If tomorrow, Arjun Singh, Kamal Nath or P Chidambaram becomes the Raksha Mantri of India, they would see nothing wrong in exhorting the youth of India to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the country, irrespective of caste, creed or community.

At the same time, these netas seem to see nothing wrong in sacrificing the country's tomorrow for their electoral todays by striking the LCD! And so what if their late leader Rajiv Gandhi had some 16 years ago accused the then prime minister V P Singh of dividing the country for politically partisan purposes under the guise of implementing the Mondal Commission's report on quotas!


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