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FIFTH
COLUMN
Year
of Inaction
In 2000
Vajpayee could have done a lot more than mere tinkering
By
Tavleen
Singh
What
a wasted year it has been for Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Government. As the
first prime minister in four years who was gifted a year of complete political
stability, there was so much he could have done to give governance a new
direction and he did nothing but tinker. He tinkered with economic reforms
instead of giving them a new thrust. He tinkered with peace in Kashmir
and the tinkering was so ineffective that we began the year 2000 with
our shameless genuflection to terrorism in Kandahar and ended it with
more car bombs in Kashmir and an attack on the Red Fort in Delhi despite
the Ramzan peace he offered. Unsurprising, because how much faith can
our only Muslim-majority state have in peace when the prime minister himself
goes out of his way to resurrect the ghost of Ayodhya?
 The
movement to build the temple to Ram was a reflection of national sentiment,
the prime minster tells us, but it clearly escapes him that by raising
an issue that was almost dead and forgotten he virtually admits that his
Government has failed on all real fronts. Is it not true that politicians
raise non-issues only when they have no genuine ones to discuss?
Vajpayee
is, though, a good man and if he takes time off on his holiday in Kerala
to do some personal stocktaking we can only hope he thinks, long and hard,
about the things he should have done. He could begin by giving serious
thought to his own Government's reports on how to cut government spending.
The Finance Ministry has a website on the subject and one of the reports
it posted at the end of the year was on how the Information & Broadcasting
Ministry could cut spending. The Geetakrishnan Committee recommends the
closure of the Films Division on the grounds that government propaganda
documentaries have become irrelevant. Well discovered. It also recommends
that the Film and Television Institute of India be handed over to the
film industry because "a budget of over Rs 11 crore per annum, of
which staff expenditure is around 34 per cent, is patently disproportionate
to the student strength of 153".
What a complete
waste of taxpayers' money this is and it is only the tip of the proverbial
iceberg. If Vajpayee is serious about cutting government spending he should
order detailed reports on the functioning of all ministries and he will
discover crores of rupees that could be much better spent on schools,
hospitals, healthcare, housing and rural roads. He might also discover
that we will never achieve full literacy in India if the HRD Ministry
continues to merely tinker with the idea of compulsory primary education.
We need a clearly articulated programme and a timetable that tells us
when education up to which class will become compulsory. Why has this
not already happened?
The prime
minister and his finance minister are believed to be deeply upset because
Indian businessmen talked about our economic failures in front of "white
foreigners" at last month's India Economic Summit. Do they think
"white foreigners" are blind and deaf and cannot see for themselves
our creaky airports, our dreadful roads and our hopeless power situation?
Instead of whining about white foreigners they would do well to find out
why our infrastructure ministries move with the leisurely stride of the
disappearing Indian elephant. The prime minister informs us that he expects
the Indian economy to grow by 9 per cent annually. How is this going to
happen without infrastructure? And please remember that according to one
estimate even if we achieve 9 per cent annual growth it will take us nearly
30 years to reach where Thailand already is. Remember also that Thailand
was behind us economically not so long ago.
If the prime
minister could cheer himself up with a few political successes he might
still be able to enjoy his coconut water in balmy Kerala. There are, alas,
none. The Home Ministry has done nothing that indicates a new direction
in Kashmir, the North-East or elsewhere in the country. It cannot even
claim that it has made a serious attempt to improve ordinary policing,
so how can we rely on it to fight terrorism?
How can
we fight terrorism if the justice system continues to be in such collapse
that murder trials go on for 20 years and the backlog in our courts will
take more than 300 years to clear. And, what did we do in the year 2000?
We argued about the age of the chief justice. It's as if governance in
India has been reduced to a bizarre satire in which farcical issues assume
gigantic proportions and real issues are treated as immaterial. If Vajpayee
has an excuse for trundling through 2000 in a daze, it could be his health.
But he now has a new pair of knees, a new skip of agility in his gait
and the continued blessing of political stability. So can we hope for
more next year than tinkering?
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