Divestment on: this time, it's the PM's authority

NEW DELHI: It may be an over-statement to say that a bigger casualty than disinvestment last weekend was the authority of the Prime Minister. But the obvious - that the process of disinvestment has virtually come a cropper - apart, the one thing that's dominating political discussion here is that Atal Bihari Vajpayee is no longer able to exert his will with the kind of ease with which he did once.There was a time, not so long ago, when a mere wave of Vajpayee's hand and a laconic theek hai would settle issues as tricky as IPCL's selloff. But on Saturday, he virtually pleaded with his colleagues not to kill the success story of the government — the disinvestment programme — but failed to make an impression on them.This is making it increasingly apparent that in the complicated matrix of the coalition government, the power equations are shifting.Look at this example: at Saturday's CCD meet, urban development minister Ananth Kumar, a political lightweight, kept insisting that there were apprehensions in people's mind about the process of valuation of PSUs.Both Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie explained that already there have been 31 transactions and, in some of them, Ananth Kumar himself has been involved; the Supreme Court has approved the valuation method and the PM has stated publicly that the process was transparent.But Ananth Kumar wouldn't give in, he reiterated that valuation process needed a re-look. This prompted Vajpayee to ask Kumar what exactly he was getting at. Pat came the reply, There are other views in the government, apart from the PM's.This was plain defiance — never in the past has anyone openly questioned the PM. If anyone ever came close to doing so, senior leaders promptly snubbed him. But in this case, only Jaswant Singh made a feeble attempt to silence Kumar, You are being unfair to all of us. This had little effect on Kumar.Kumar's 'intransigence' tells an eloquent story about the changing equations. Top BJP and NDA leaders are jockeying to re-position themselves. The first among them is George Fernandes.He is in the process of rediscovering his socialist moorings and, strangely enough, getting support from a number of BJP leaders whose background has been anything but socialist. It appears that Fernandes has become an alibi for these leaders for their own political re-positioning — support him if it helps to score a point against a BJP rival.The political game becomes evident when you see there's hardly any uneasiness about disinvestment among the NDA allies. DMK's Murasoli Maran, for instance, supported the disinvestment process at the CCD meeting.When BJP leaders were hemming and hawing about disinvestment, Vajpayee asked Maran for his views. And Mr Maran said, Disinvestment has been a shining achievement of this government. But in the past few months, there's been an impression that the government is divided and it is backtracking. This should be reversed.Now, who is seen to be backtracking? BJP leaders like Ram Naik, Ms Uma Bharti, Jagmohan and Ananth Kumar. Jaswant Singh is seen to be lacking conviction in either disinvestment or to stand up against elder brother and senior colleague George Fernandes.Who could make them all fall in line? The Big Duo. But Mr Advani has been vacillating, while appreciating Fernandes' socialist background or the government's so-called political compulsions.Meantime, vested corporate interests are fishing in these murky waters, sometimes with the help of bureaucrats, sometimes with the help of politicians.It is increasingly clear that politics or political interests, rather than economics, will determine the future course of policy.Fernandes, for instance, didn't say a word about a mid-term correction in policy-making at the CCD; he merely said the government must be mindful of elections while deciding issues like disinvestment. As things stand, policy-making has become — to use the words of a minister — an arithmetic summation of random interests.In this situation, it is perhaps not entirely accidental that the disinvestment process has been nearly torpedoed on the eve of the Prime Minister's visit to the USHe would certainly be embarrassed if asked why settled policy issues are being re-opened and whether disinvestment will take place at all in the next two years. Perhaps not everybody will be worried over the possible embarrassment of the leader.

Divestment on: this time, it's the PM's authority

It may be an over-statement to say that a bigger casualty than disinvestment last weekend was the authority of the PM. But the one thing that’s dominating political discussion here is that Vajpayee is no longer able to exert his will with the kind...

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