Why is UPA government in trouble
Only thing more surprising than Ramdev's errors are Congress, UPA goof-ups. But it's not just the party, policy is also in paralysis.
By Abheek Barman, ET Bureau | Updated:
On May 31, teleyogi Ramdev said that he didn’t want the prime minister and judges to come under the Lok Pal’s scanner. “If the prime minister and the chief justice, who represent the two pillars of democracy can be corrupt, so can the Lok Pal,” he said in Madhya Pradesh. This statement melted hearts in government.
Increasingly flustered by a Supreme Court-led probe against graft, a widely telecast fast by Anna Hazare and pressure from various busybodies, the administration saw this as a chance to break out of the cycle of accusations and fasts. Manmohan Singh responded by agreeing with Ramdev that corruption was a serious issue, “We’re committed to tackling it with all resources at our disposal.”
The government reckoned that two televised crusades against black money were better than one: people on either side would waste their energies squabbling amongst themselves. This belief set the stage for a terrible political error. Through the afternoon and evening of Saturday, June 4, the administration’s Ramdev-manager Kapil Sibal watched with increasing horror as Baba crossed all deadlines to break his fast, and raised increasingly bizarre demands.
The ground is a brickbat’s throw away from Muslim-dominated Chandni Chowk, Sibal’s own constituency. By evening, intelligence agencies were alarmed by the presence of thousands of saffron-clad folk armed with lathis, in the crowd.
The presence of Rithambhara, a RSS functionary who spat vitriol during the campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid, on the same stage as Ramdev, seemed to indicate that the stage was set for a communal conflagration. At night, Delhi police broke up the party and dispatched Ramdev, who had tried to flee the site of his ‘satyagraha’ disguised as a woman, to Haridwar.
Reluctant Pranab
Almost all Opposition parties balked at the sudden, violent way the teleyogi’s party was broken up. The Congress still hasn’t come up with a coherent explanation of why it behaved schizophrenically. But one thing is clear: the Congress is suddenly looking directionless and devoid of leadership.
“Today things look as if the prime minister and the Congress president are not around,” says Ramchandra Guha, historian of modern India. Indeed, for a full 48 hours after the Sunday morning when Ramdev’s party was broken up, the government and the Congress party seemed in utter disarray. But it was clear from June 1 that the government didn’t have a defined line on how to deal with the teleyogi.
“The government should have had a clear line on how to deal with Ramdev. If it didn’t want him to do a public fast, it should have sent him away from the airport. There was no need to send ministers to plead with him,” says a senior Congressman.
Only one thing was clear from the beginning: Kapil Sibal, the administration’s main troubleshooter for the 2G case, was also leading the Ramdev project. But that makes it hard to explain why Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal, tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahay, the Cabinet secretary and the most senior mantri after Manmohan Singh, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee accompanied Sibal to the two and a half hour meeting with Ramdev at Delhi airport.
Increasingly flustered by a Supreme Court-led probe against graft, a widely telecast fast by Anna Hazare and pressure from various busybodies, the administration saw this as a chance to break out of the cycle of accusations and fasts. Manmohan Singh responded by agreeing with Ramdev that corruption was a serious issue, “We’re committed to tackling it with all resources at our disposal.”
The government reckoned that two televised crusades against black money were better than one: people on either side would waste their energies squabbling amongst themselves. This belief set the stage for a terrible political error. Through the afternoon and evening of Saturday, June 4, the administration’s Ramdev-manager Kapil Sibal watched with increasing horror as Baba crossed all deadlines to break his fast, and raised increasingly bizarre demands.
The ground is a brickbat’s throw away from Muslim-dominated Chandni Chowk, Sibal’s own constituency. By evening, intelligence agencies were alarmed by the presence of thousands of saffron-clad folk armed with lathis, in the crowd.
The presence of Rithambhara, a RSS functionary who spat vitriol during the campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid, on the same stage as Ramdev, seemed to indicate that the stage was set for a communal conflagration. At night, Delhi police broke up the party and dispatched Ramdev, who had tried to flee the site of his ‘satyagraha’ disguised as a woman, to Haridwar.
Reluctant Pranab
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Almost all Opposition parties balked at the sudden, violent way the teleyogi’s party was broken up. The Congress still hasn’t come up with a coherent explanation of why it behaved schizophrenically. But one thing is clear: the Congress is suddenly looking directionless and devoid of leadership.
“Today things look as if the prime minister and the Congress president are not around,” says Ramchandra Guha, historian of modern India. Indeed, for a full 48 hours after the Sunday morning when Ramdev’s party was broken up, the government and the Congress party seemed in utter disarray. But it was clear from June 1 that the government didn’t have a defined line on how to deal with the teleyogi.
“The government should have had a clear line on how to deal with Ramdev. If it didn’t want him to do a public fast, it should have sent him away from the airport. There was no need to send ministers to plead with him,” says a senior Congressman.
Only one thing was clear from the beginning: Kapil Sibal, the administration’s main troubleshooter for the 2G case, was also leading the Ramdev project. But that makes it hard to explain why Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal, tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahay, the Cabinet secretary and the most senior mantri after Manmohan Singh, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee accompanied Sibal to the two and a half hour meeting with Ramdev at Delhi airport.
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Mukherjee, say sources in the party, was reluctant to meet the teleyogi, but was persuaded by the prime minister himself, to attend. All this high-voltage attention was apparently to convince Ramdev that the government was sincere about unearthing black money and punishing the corrupt. Of course, the attempt and a subsequent round of discussions between Ramdev and Sibal in central Delhi’s Claridges hotel, failed in its objectives.
‘Soniaji, Do Something’
Prime minister Singh has tried to justify the talks by saying dialogue is always good. But that hasn’t convinced too many people. “One thing is for sure: Soniaji would not have allowed things to go the way it did. She would have nipped everything in the bud,” says a senior Congress leader.
The Congress party had earlier decided that it didn’t consider Anna or Ramdev to be serious political issues, and the government would deal with them. The only person within the party who took on Ramdev is former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh, with his caustic one-liners.
“The organisational chaos and lack of direction within the Congress party is taking a toll on governance, administration and policymaking,” says Guha.
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He’s right. In key places like the prime minister’s office and the ministry of finance, all of babudom was kept busy for more than a week, doing nothing but preparing briefing notes on existing rules and laws in place to curb graft and track cash trails.“Who has the time for reforms these days?” asks a bureaucrat sardonically, “We’re all working for babas and civil society people.” There’s another factor behind the policy paralysis: not just babus, but many ministers themselves refuse to take any hard decisions because they’re not sure that they’ll retain their jobs after a reshuffle that could come any day now.
Scared Ministers, Babus
A comprehensive reshuffle was promised by Manmohan Singh in January, soon after he changed the portfolios of many ministers in his Cabinet. But today, there’s a cloud of uncertainty hanging over that too. The monsoon session starts in mid-July and it was widely expected that the reshuffle would happen before that, but now there are rumours that it could take place later, maybe after the session is over.
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This delay will do nothing to energise an administration that seems to have gone to sleep on reforms, whether it’s changes in mining or land acquisition laws, food security, clearing the long-pending acquisition of Cairn India by Vedanta, or a decision to create a separate state of Telangana.“No minister is willing to sign on files that could create even the hint of a controversy. Bureaucracy has sensed this caution. They refuse to take verbal instructions, insisting that the minister writes everything down. This has created a stalemate in all offices,” says a senior bureaucrat.
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The prime minister, unfortunately, is silent on everything, including even on the timing of the next, decisive reshuffle. “Anywhere outside India, he’s seen as the leader of the government,” says Guha. But within the country, who’s leading India now?
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