One simple — if sometimes simplistic — way of assessing a government’s health is to see who it is willing to sacrifice and who it considers indispensable.
Most governments also invite this test when they are at a turning point midway through their term (as did Rajiv Gandhi when Bofors broke) or at the edge, towards the end of the term (as Narasimha Rao with hawala) and we will talk more about them later. This one, even if not yet on a downward escalator, is at least in the about-turn mode exactly halfway through its term.
And if it clings to an indispensable new saviour in Narendra Modi and is willing to abandon poor Yashwant Sinha, it must tell you something not only about the state of bankruptcy and cynicism but also the total lack of any intellect or ideas.
In the dust (or the surf, considering that this happened in Goa) raised by the prime minister’s momentary lapse of reason on Modi we seem to have ignored the truly ludicrous resolution passed by the BJP on the economy.
To anybody figuring out the future of this government this should be essential reading because there cannot be more clinching evidence of the fact that the old guard has seized control of the party at a difficult time. The government, the resolution says, should withdraw the LPG and kerosene subsidies only over a period of time.
What this implies is, leave the tough part for the next government which, they obviously concede, won’t be theirs. Yes, lower interest rates are better for growth. But for the old people, make special schemes, offer higher rates so they can continue to live on their interest incomes.
Now how many senior citizens have the luxury of being able to live on interest earned from their savings in a country where nearly 30 per cent of all people still live below the poverty line?
It may actually be a good idea since we are so lacking in a social security net for the aged. But a government-subsidised higher interest rate for people (young or old) with sizeable savings is the exact definition of robbing the poor to subsidise the middle class.
But do the BJP’s golden oldies bother? When they look around themselves all they see are retirees and you cannot fault them for thinking that the votebanks are full of retired people.
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Each one of the concessions the BJP resolution has demanded amounts to a subsidy for the middle class. The Indira Gandhi-type populism was at least smarter in that it at least pretended to be pro-poor and even anti-rich. Nationalisation, garibi hatao, abolition of princely titles and privy purses. This is a straightforward case of dipping into the till to pay yourselves. But that is not the entire problem.
This government thinks it is so impossible for it to live up to its promise of good governance that it might even turn the next election into an ‘ashvamedh yagya’ under Narendra Modi’s leadership. The problem is, when a resolution of this kind is passed by the dominant party of the coalition while midway through the Parliament session where the budget is yet to be debated and passed, it completely destroys the credibility of the government and its finance minister. It is silly enough for the other coalition partners to ask for rollbacks.
You would normally imagine that the right forum for that would have been the cabinet meetings where the budget was passed and where the partners are represented, particularly in this cabinet which happens to be the largest ever in our history.
But if even the dominant party, to which the finance minister also belongs, starts making these demands, it at once confirms the impression of this being a lame duck government. A lame duck government, halfway through its term!
So lame, actually, that it now thinks it is so impossible for it to live up to its promise of good governance that it might even turn the next election into an ashvamedh yagya under the leadership of Narendra Modi if not into a communal riot altogether.
So far it had three achievements to talk about with justification: speeding up of economic reform; management of foreign policy, particularly after 9/11; and maintenance of inter-communal peace and overall law and order. Two of three now lie in the past. The reform agenda has been punctured so thoroughly that anybody who saw poor Yashwant Sinha justifying post-budget rollbacks, quoting past precedents, even before rollbacks have been effected this time, could figure out that henceforth this will be a government run on the principles of largesse and handouts rather than hard-headed reform and economic management.
No finance minister before Sinha has been made to look so lonely, pitiable, so defeated, to lay out such a pathetic pre-emptive defence of rollbacks in a budget he should have been defending with conviction against the Opposition in the nation’s Parliament.
This is not a criticism of Sinha. We must sympathise with him because it seems the poor fellow actually bought the slogans of good governance and reform that his party had been shouting so far. How a life-long bureaucrat could be so easily fooled by the politicians is a question others in the IAS might one day ask Sinha.
We now face the prospect of our politics receding into the 1989-90 phase of stagnation when we kept on fighting over mandir and Mandal while an interim government had to airlift gold reserves to prevent a sovereign default But today, his party seems to believe that survival lies in making its voters an offering of not merely the corpses of Muslims but also the head of Sinha who dared to pick the pocket of its most vocal, though by no means the most numerous, middle class supporters.
But can you really fault the BJP alone? The rise of the Modi factor has galvanised the Opposition. It has even got Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh Yadav to be on talking terms. It has brought back to our front pages the pictures of Surjit, Gowda, Bardhan and other fossils with clasped hands, raised in a new show of unity and hope, howsoever premature.
They all want Modi out. You can then work out the corollary as it might work for the BJP think tank: the man my opposition hates most must be the one my voters love most. Nobody is even shedding a tear for Yashwant Sinha. The Opposition is not criticising him, nor is it complaining about his being downsized in so brutal a manner.
The political debate has now moved out of the realm of reform, development, growth and other such mundane, governance-linked issues.
Secularism, real or pseudo, sounds much more like an election slogan than better governance. For the Congress, this has the promise of bringing back the Muslim vote. For the BJP it might be the ticket to Hindu consolidation. For Mulayam the crucial issue, in fact the only issue, is the preservation of his Muslim vote.
So how is Yashwant Sinha, his budget, or economic reform in general, relevant to any of this? We now face the prospect of our politics receding into the 1989/90 phase of bankruptcy and stagnation when we kept on fighting over mandir and Mandal, while the nation went so bankrupt an interim government had to airlift our gold reserves to prevent a sovereign default.
Mercifully, given the momentum reform has given our economy over the past decade, it is unlikely we would lapse into the old Hindu rate of growth (2-3 per cent). The band in this phase of bankrupt politics will be 4-5 per cent. And if it comes to be described as the Hindutva Rate of Growth, remember who coined that phrase the first time.
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