Fifth Column: Dark Corner of India

India Today
October 26, 1998

FIFTH COLUMN
Dark Corner of India

Are Vajpayee's ministers only capable of twiddling thumbs?

Tavleen Singh

Friends who see the prime minister more often than I do tell me he has changed dramatically in recent weeks. Gone is the listless, disheartened man we have grown accustomed to in the past six months. In his place has been reborn the old, charismatic Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He took no nonsense from his allies, I hear, and even mocked at some of them for making endless demands for more ministers. When even this did not work, he simply announced he was postponing the cabinet expansion they had all been slavering over. Those who travelled with him to New York report he was full of youthful bounce and energy and showed every indication of a man who is in absolute control of India and its administration.

This is terrific news. But can we now see some sign that his ministry is making a serious attempt at real governance? Because despite this vaunted new energy in the Prime Minister's Office, on the ground we trundle along pretty much as we have always done. Slowly and badly.

With a handful of honourable exceptions, the new ministers have simply moved into the offices of the old ones and done little more than acquire airs. They are so obviously enjoying the perks and privileges of high office -- cars, palatial bungalows, armed security guards -- that it is no surprise all the MPs who have been left out also want to become ministers at once.

None of them has even the faintest idea about what he would like to achieve by becoming a minister. In the words of one cynical cabinet member, "All they want are the cars and the houses and the power. From the moment word spread about a possible cabinet expansion, I have been harassed by my partymen. They all want to be ministers." This particular minister belongs to one of the BJP's coalition partners. Given his predicament, it needs little imagination to see what kind of pressure the prime minister himself must be under.

Vajpayee has done well to postpone plans to induct more ministers because it will give him time to do some valuable stocktaking. He could start alphabetically -- go down the list and see which ministers are doing well and which ones are completely useless. Speaking alphabetically, it would be interesting to know what the agriculture minister has been doing while the price of onions has gone up and up and up. Why did he wait so long to start importing them if this was going to happen anyway?

Other than this, would the ministry like to tell us what it plans to do to prevent such scarcity recurring and whether it has spent any time trying to work out a new agriculture policy? Or are we simply carrying on with what the Congress ordained? It's time for some answers.

If the prime minister continues alphabetically when he gets to C he may discover serious incompetence in the Civil Aviation Ministry. The minister foolishly followed in the dubious footsteps of his predecessor and this resulted in the Tata group withdrawing its proposal for an airline.

Every requirement the ministry demanded was met, every condition fulfilled. Even then, the minister insisted he needed more time. Finally, it was too late. The episode also led, inevitably, to charges that perhaps the ministry was in the clutches of a certain airline tycoon who has worked strenuously to prevent the Tata airline from coming to be.

Why blame only civil aviation? The prime minister can probably find similar incompetence delaying vital projects in virtually every ministry of his Government.

Business Standard supplied a list on its front page a few days ago. The five projects it mentioned were: Iridium satellite telephone, Bangalore airport, Delhi's mass transport system, Cogentrix power and the light combat aircraft. Could we have some answers please?

If the prime minister makes a serious study he may discover that most of these delays are the result of his ministers being too new and naive to take on the mighty Indian bureaucracy. After all, many of our current ministers are dealing with bureaucrats for the first time.

Since most of the BJP-led coalition's ministers are too lazy to do their homework, they are forced to rely on what their bureaucrats tell them. Usually what they are told is things can't be done "because there is a process". Some are actually naive enough to believe that this process can take years when, in fact, it can be truncated to weeks.

Vajpayee's Government could have made its most dramatic changes in areas like education, health and family planning. This is where the Congress really failed. Higher education in India will collapse unless we recognise the need to privatise it now. Also, mass literacy is simply not possible without compulsory primary education, at least in our four most illiterate states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

So far nothing has happened. We don't even have a separate Ministry of Education yet. Without it nothing is possible. Healthcare and population control are closely linked and there is no such thing as healthcare in rural India. But Vajpayee's health minister appears to be comatose.

So if Vajpayee is now rejuvenated and full of beans, could he at least try and give us some indication that he has understood the Congress failed because it could not provide real governance? It now lurks in the wings waiting for the BJP to make exactly the same mistakes. If there is new dynamism in the prime minister's household, it is imperative that it filter down very quickly to his Government.

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