NDA afflicted by policy Alzheimer’s?
Much of the talk of any new govt will certainly be about change, but much of governance is actually about continuityand that is as it should be
The second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2) government was often accused of policy paralysis. The second term of National Democratic Alliance might well be afflicted by policy Alzheimer’s—forgetting or ignoring what has happened in the past even if that was to the good. How else does one react to a recent tweet—the main mode of gleaning information of what the Narendra Modi government is thinking and doing—from the Prime Minister that reads thus: I also suggested to Dr Jim Yong Kim the cleaning of the Ganga would be a very inspiring project for the World Bank.
It certainly would be, but nobody obviously briefed the Prime Minister that thanks to the proactive efforts of the earlier UPA-2 government, the World Bank had already approved a first-phase $1 billion loan for Mission Clean Ganga in June 2011 and disbursements had also commenced.
Over the past three years, some ₹ 6,500 crore worth of projects have been sanctioned to expand sewage treatment infrastructure in the five basin states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. And just a couple of days back, the World Bank’s board gave its approval to the Neeranchal watershed project announced grandly by the finance minister in his maiden budget, but which had been in the works for the past two years.
There are a number of other examples. When the finance minister announced an allocation of ₹ 14,000 crore for the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY, or the Prime Minister’s village roads scheme) for 2014-15, ruling party parliamentarians thumped their desks enthusiastically. What was forgotten was that the allocation for PMGSY was ₹ 24,000 crore in 2012-13. What was also forgotten was that in the 2013-14 budget a PMGSY-2 had been launched for the upgradation of old rural roads.
Then take MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). The finance minister’s declaration during his budget speech that it would be linked to productive asset creation was greeted with acclaim. But what is new exactly? If you add up water conservation, waterbody revival and land development works on private lands, 60% of all MGNREGA works would be agriculture-linked.
In 2013-14, almost 28% of the work related to the building of toilets, which is very much in tune with the objectives of the proposed Swachh Bharat Mission. This mission, in turn, is a continuation the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan started three years back.
Much of the talk of any new government will certainly be about change, but much of governance is actually about continuity—and that is as it should be. Indeed, maximum governance—one of the oft-stated pillars of the Modi administration—depends very much on taking forward policies, programmes and projects that come as part of the inheritance.
Of course, every government is entitled to modify and even discard what it feels does not fit in with its priorities. At the same time, continuing what is on-going, especially if it has had an impact, is smart strategy. UPA-1, for instance, vastly expanded PMGSY, which was Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s grand idea. During 2000-04, PMGSY sanctions amounted to ₹ 13,000 crore, while during 2009-14, sanctions totalled ₹ 65,000 crore. In the same vein, after some initial hiccups, the Prime Minister and the finance minister, for example, appear to have decided not to abandon the Aadhaar unique identity number project of the UPA-2, but give it a fresh lease of life.
It has been said the essence of parliamentary democracy is that where you stand depends on where you sit. There are any number of examples of political leaders and political parties taking a particular position on an issue when in opposition and then taking exactly the opposite stance when in power. This is not hypocrisy, but is in the nature of democratic politics. It is this that ensures a good degree of continuity in governance. One of the classic examples of this is the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance’s approach to the Enron power project in Maharashtra in the mid-1990s. During the campaign, the alliance announced that the project would be cancelled if it was voted to power, but when it actually came to power, it quickly took the project forward.
In Andhra Pradesh, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was critical of N. Chandrababu Naidu’s obsession with information technology when he was opposition leader, but built on those very policies as chief minister.
In more recent times, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan criticised some of the healthcare schemes of the Ashok Gehlot administration, but has continued with them after coming to power last year. Tamil Nadu’s outstanding successes both in economic growth and social welfare owe much to this continuity factor when the two rival Dravidian parties alternate in power. The recent decision by the Modi administration to hike the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in insurance to 49% from the present 26% is a reversal of the BJP’s earlier stand when P. Chidambaram had first proposed it—and this is all to the good. No position can remain ossified in time.
The noted American politician Mario Cuomo once said: “You campaign in poetry but govern in prose." Continuity is prosaic and mundane, while change is dramatic. It is natural for governments to try and create a distinctive niche for themselves. Sometimes that niche can be for real but very often that niche involves heavy repackaging and repositioning without disturbing the basics. There is nothing wrong in this because of the compulsions of competitive politics.
But once in a while, it would not be entirely inappropriate to give credit where it is due. This applies as much to those in government as it does to those in the opposition. Commending political opponents is very rare in any setting, but especially so in our country. Politics will get enriched immeasurably if occasionally, credit flows across political divides and boundaries, not just on the floor of Parliament but as part of the wider public discourse.
The author is a Rajya Sabha MP and former Union minister.
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