Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: November 4, 2012
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2012/11/grand-old-party-in-terminal-decline.html

The reshuffle has come and gone. If the idea was to change the conversation in the bazaars and village chaupals, it failed. People do not care. A Government that has lost credibility cannot win back the public trust by moving a few square pegs from one set of round holes to another set of round holes. It no longer matters. Whatever desperate measures the UPA Government might take between now and the next poll — witness rolling back the LPG price hike post-haste within a couple of hours of announcing it — its electoral rout is unavoidable. The aam admi can forgive political corruption but back-breaking rise in prices will necessarily result in a popular backlash.

And price-rise is something this Government will find very hard to contain. Levies on essential goods cannot be rolled back. Indeed, given the high fiscal deficit, Finance Minister P Chidambaram needs to mop up as much revenue as he can for him to have enough to allocate more and more funds to Sonia Gandhi’s pet vote-winning schemes in the election season fast descending upon us. Besides, he needs to contain the fiscal deficit to impress the central bank for the latter to be able to reduce the key policy rate.

Now, he can do that by judiciously cutting back the huge outgo on subsidising both fuel and fertiliser. But which Government has the guts to challenge the vested interests, especially when the general election is only 18 months away? Already it may have invited trouble from the powerful farmers’ lobby by deciding not to raise the minimum support price for wheat this season. When you have raised the MSP for wheat all these years through the decade, often improving upon the price recommended by a body of experts, keeping it unchanged ahead of the polls is to court trouble.

The decision might have stemmed from the Government’s anxiety to ensure stability in the price of atta at the retail level but, unfortunately, when every commodity is caught in the general price-spiral it is hardly likely that the staple wheat flour will remain unaffected. Unless there is a cap on the general price-line wheat prices will move in sympathy with other goods regardless of whether its growers are paid the old MSP for their produce.

Truly, Chidambaram’s is an unenviable task, though he can always be relied upon to project a doer’s image, thanks to his felicity with words and his hold over a section of the English language media. But what he cannot do is to contain the price-rise. For that structural changes in the economy are essential but these cannot even be contemplated when the polity is already in the election mode.

Incidentally, the other day on one of the television channels a compulsive apologist of the Prime Minister was waxing eloquent about the insightful Ministerial changes, emphasising how key Ministries in the infrastructure sector, be it railways,  highways, power, shipping, telecom, et al, had been entrusted in the safe hands of wise and efficient Ministers. In fact, he mildly chided the always well-spoken and gentlemanly Yogendra Yadav, lately of the India Against Corruption movement, for ignoring that cardinal message of the reshuffle.

What the Prime Minister’s self-appointed media adviser failed to point out was as to where the additional funds for new roads, power plants, shipyards, et al, would come from, given the precarious state of the public finances. But then, when you set out to impress the people in authority, you don’t have to sound convincing, even logical.

The truth is this Government has ruined the nation’s finances, wasting a lot on non-plan heads as also on throwing away good money on poorly-targeted welfare schemes. When you cannot even ensure that funds meant for the disabled distributed in-house by one of your own are well-directed, how can you undertake judicious distribution of tens of thousands of crores of rupees earmarked for the employment guarantee and other entitlement schemes aimed at winning goodwill for the ruling party?

Aside from the mess on the economic front, look at the administrative and political skills of the Government. It speaks volumes for the stewardship of the Defence Ministry by Saint Antony that the top Generals are yet again engaged in a public spat as to who will succeed Army Chief General Bikram Singh. Former Army Chief VK Singh had almost pushed the Government to the brink, thanks to the peculiar succession plan devised by the cabal of crafty Generals in whose hands the do-nothing Defence Minister has played into so easily. In all fairness, General VK Singh ought to have been allowed another year as the Army Chief.

Because injustice was done to him, he has now openly come out against the Congress and the UPA. An Army chief usually enjoys high regard among the simple, rural folks, more so in the rugged Haryana-Punjab belt which accounts for a high percentage of soldiery, present and retired. He is now marshalling public opinion in conjunction with the charismatic Anna Hazare. His call for the dissolution of Parliament might be somewhat over-the-top (though the Government after the exit of Mamata Banerjee is clearly in a minority) the retired Army Chief does strike a chord with the people because he is known to be squeaky clean and the Government has failed woefully on  multiple fronts.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects who had earlier hyped the Ministerial reshuffle are now busy selling the proposed organisational changes in the Congress under the aegis of the allegedly newly-assertive Rahul Gandhi. However, it is a mystery as to what Gandhi junior will do now which he did not do earlier. After all, he was the unquestioned number two in the party regardless of what designation he might sport next. Replacing a few akhbari leaders in the organisational set-up with new ones, albeit relatively younger, is unlikely to revive the party.

The youth brigade does not have the key to the hearts of the masses. In a polity badly fragmented along caste, religion, region and even ethnic lines, any attempt to reinvent the Congress of yore, when it was all things to all people, is bound to come unstuck, especially when the mother-son duo lacks charisma. The Congress is in terminal decline; it can stay relevant only if it sheds its arrogance and woos various regional leaders in a spirit of genuine cooperation rather than trying to erode their influence through trickery and back-stabbing. It is a measure of the Congress’s arrogance that Mamata Banerjee is out of the UPA while its loyal ally, M Karunanidhi, is sulking in his tent, ready to dump the coalition given half-a-chance by arch rival Jayalalithaa.