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India Today, January 25, 1999
Jan 25, 1999

RACE COURSE ROAD
Give More of Less

Vajpayee's mantra after key decisions fail to entuse.

By Prabhu Chawla

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is faced with a peculiar dilemma. In the past four weeks, the Cabinet has taken over a dozen major decisions in the economic and social sectors. Yet there is no visible change in the image of the Government. Should he then give more of less or less of more?

Last week, the Centre promulgated an ordinance repealing the archaic Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act (ULCRA), amended the buy back ordinance, allowed NRIs to enter India without visas and created the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation for improving suburban train facilities for the metro's 65 lakh commuters. These were major decisions, yet were tucked away in the inside pages of the national and even regional newspapers. In fact, senior civil servants have been working at breakneck speed to prepare proposals for the Cabinet's weekly meetings. Unlike in the past when cabinet meetings lasted barely an hour or so, those chaired by Vajpayee extend to over three hours, running through the entire gamut of ministries from finance to water resources.

Several far-reaching decisions have been made at these meetings but if the media has failed to grasp their import, the fault lies squarely with the Government. Its credibility is so low that nobody is quite taken in by these announcements and no one believes it is going to make a difference anyway. It has recently come to the notice of the prime minister that officials have been making routine announcements about these key decisions during their daily interaction with the media. Nobody bothers to explain the new government initiatives and how the economy stands to benefit from them. For example, the news about the abolition of ULCRA was carried on the inside pages in almost all the pink papers when it is bound to have a great impact on India's real-estate market. Besides making excess land available for housing and industrial activity, it will boost the cement and steel industries and generate employment. An alert and media-savvy government would have handed over copious notes listing these gains to the media and the opinion makers. But the file-pushers in the Government haven't even thought about it. Two weeks ago, Vajpayee launched the 7,000 km national highway construction scheme from Karnataka. The project is expected to change the face of rural India but till date all that the newspapers have reported about it is the confusion about its feasibility. Clearly, decisions are being taken at a speed that our laidback mandarins are unaccustomed to. That perhaps explains why they choose to ignore these. Little wonder then that despite the major initiatives his Government has taken, Vajpayee is still seen as the head of an effete administration. To add to its administrative woes are the charges being hurled now about its inability to contain the new brand of saffron adventurists.

Vajpayee seems to have finally been convinced about the futility of trying to do too much too soon. If he does, he knows that the bureaucracy will not be able to market all of it at the same time. Which is why he has now decided to adopt the More of Less formula. For both the prime minister and the bureaucracy it suits to talk more about less.

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