Two more years?

If it wants to continue as a government,UPA 2 must snap out of its silence and denial

Whatever the marks it gives itself,as UPA 2 completes three years,its report card is blotched by the several silences of a government that has mostly failed to decide. When it has spoken out,or assumed the decisive demeanour,it has only been to take a backward step. As it did recently,on the controversy over a long-ago B.R. Ambedkar cartoon that the NCERT textbooks have carried since 2006. Or,before that,in order to,in effect,put taxes back to the early ’60s. Occasionally,those at the top echelons of the UPA have also spoken out to confirm that they remain in denial. Rewind,for instance,to Sonia Gandhi’s speech to the Congress Parliamentary Party earlier this month,her first public acknowledgment — rather,lack of it — of her party’s underwhelming performance in the recent round of assembly polls. The Congress president asked Congressmen and women to be better behaved and abstain from “factionalism”,she played down the Congress’s spectacular losses in Uttar Pradesh and declared that it had become “fashionable” to attack the government. She didn’t say that the party had made mistakes,that it would try to identify and redress them,that it would hold leaders accountable for their poor decisions,strategy or tactic. In a sense,in its recurring pattern of denial and silence,Manmohan Singh’s government takes its cue from Sonia Gandhi’s party.

In its second term,the Manmohan Singh government has also been preoccupied with dousing fires sparked off in UPA 1. Be it the 2G scam or CWG,the big corruption scandals that have cast a heavy pall over UPA 2 had their beginnings in UPA 1. This has led to a curious situation: UPA 2 shows none of the drive or outreach of its previous avatar — there has been no big idea like the RTI or an attempt to change the subject like NREGA,and the coordination mechanisms with allies have all been long discarded. But it is still trying to overcome the negative legacy of the past.

The UPA 2 government still has two years to go — a long time in politics. The 2G and CWG scams are now in the courts. At least for now,the Anna mobilisation appears to have met its natural end. There is a global economic slump and the rupee sinks daily. The Manmohan Singh government must now seize the space it has gained and the crisis thrust upon it. It could begin by pushing through some of the belated economic reform measures that it has so far stalled by pointing to pressure from allies. It may even be surprised. Eventually,the survival instincts of its allies could well make it difficult for them to live up to their own threats. But whatever the difficulties,UPA 2 does not have the option of continuing to stand still.