Words, words, words, protested Eliza Doolittle to that young man courting her, “don’t talk of love, show me!” So who’s going to fall for the verbiage of the United Progressive Alliance’s Common Minimum Programme. To be fair, governments are judged by the promises they keep. So it is important to know what promises are made, so as to be able to judge them against it at the hustings. However, in the final analysis, it is performance that is more important than promise and if the voter’s perception is that a ruling party or alliance has not performed well, irrespective of their promises, the anti-incumbency sentiment sets in. In its broad outline the UPA’s CMP is a “motherhood and apple-pie” statement that promises heaven on earth. It is like a mission statement, not really an agenda for action.Discerning critics will look at the specifics and see what the promises mean for the government’s fiscal bottomline. Are commitments being made that can’t be kept? Will there be reversal of past policies? It appears the CMP does not threaten any major economic apple cart, apart from disinvestment. Here, too, the Left’s willingness to go along with the phrase “privatisation on a case by case basis” gives hope. The Left’s presence and Manmohan Singh’s leadership should at least make sure there’s no privatisation on a “suitcase to suitcase” basis! The economy requires more investment and the current obsession with disinvestment should be balanced with more emphasis on policies that increase gross capital formation. The real problem will be with the implementation of promises with a fiscal impact. Any populist pressure to hike subsidies and non-productive expenditure could derail the fiscal adjustment process. If to avert this, the government is tempted to hike taxes, this would hurt the growth recovery under way and the improved fiscal compliance regime. Reasonably low taxes are better administered.Much is being made by the Left about the promise on reservation for women in legislatures. Here political parties must first improve the gender balance in their own party organisations. No party has one-third women in its high command. Indeed, the Union cabinet has only one woman! The really important area of reform signaled in the CMP is the education sector. The BJP has left behind an unholy mess in human resources development that requires cleaning up. But it remains to be seen if one dinosaur can do better than another. Hopefully, Arjun Singh will not turn out to be a Leftist version of M.M. Joshi and will, in fact, be able to truly democratise education by spreading literacy, modernising and enhancing human capabilities. It is by such specific yardsticks that the impact of the CMP will be judged. Not by inter-ministerial expenditure allocations in the Union budget.
