May 3, 1999

A vote of no confidence in one PM must also be a vote of confidence in the next.

The confidence vote of April 17, the sixth in the past three years, which cost A.B. Vajpayee the prime ministership, won't be the last in a long time. Such voting follows from Article 75(3) of the Constitution, which says that the council of ministers shall be "collectively responsible" to the House of the People. Ministerial responsibility entails that the Cabinet enjoys the confidence of the Lok Sabha. In a splintered Lok Sabha like the 12th, only 3.31 per cent of the House -- the AIADMK's strength -- could topple a government, engulfing the nation in uncertainty. There is also an alternating pattern in the cycle of confidence votes -- every other vote being the result of a previous confidence withdrawn. This time it was Jayalalitha changing her mind. Earlier, the Congress lost its faith in the United Front ministry twice in one year.

To protect the cabinet system, which forms the essence of the Indian republic, there is an urgent need to make it obligatory for the party or group that decides to withdraw support to the prime minister to spell out whom it would support as the next prime minister. If the next choice is unable to muster a majority, the withdrawal of support should not be accepted by the President. If such a double-ended provision was in place in the Constitution, the horse-trading that began after the fall of the Vajpayee cabinet on April 17 could have been averted. In a situation where the prime minister has resigned and has been asked to mind the store till a replacement is found, the realignment that ensues is bound to be vitiated by coercion and inducement. The choice becomes all the more difficult for small groups with local interests who shift loyalties to be on the right side of power in Delhi. Like it has been evident in the case of the National Conference. If one prime minister is out, the nation should know then and there who is the next man -- or woman -- in. Politics is not about empty spaces.

Feeding the Future

Celebrate the bumper crop but don't push back the second Green Revolution.

In a time when dark clouds hover above the Indian economy, agriculture has provided the silver lining. A record-breaking rabi (winter) harvest has pushed foodgrain production in 1998-99 to just over the 200 million tonne mark. Sugarcane production is moving towards the 300 million tonne figure. Food ministry officials are exultant that even the onion crop -- the cause of a national catastrophe less than a year ago -- is in fine fettle. Against a stipulated foodgrain buffer stock of 16 million tonnes, Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouses are having to cope with 21 million tonnes. Indeed, the problems of plenty are plenty -- from glut management to addressing the larger paradox of self-sufficiency in food and starving millions.

As stocks grow, they gobble up space. It is not feasible for FCI to simply keep renting new premises. With international wheat prices not exactly buoyant, exports may not be a very attractive option. Focused food for work programmes, perhaps even ad hoc, year-specific ones, could take India's wealth from its granaries to its poorest households. There are other long-term worries. In the period 1991-98, foodgrain production grew at an annual rate of 1.25 per cent; the population went up by 1.80 per cent. The lesson is that the three-decade-old Green Revolution has plateaued. It has served India well but it needs a successor. India's farm yields are still woefully low. China raises 6,000 kg of rice per hectare, India manages less than 2,500 kg. That apart, the new agrarian age has not dawned upon large parts of India, the east for instance. Green Revolution II is an idea whose time has long come. It will require a consolidation of fragmented land holdings, a closer relationship between the farm economy and the market economy and the acceptance of biotechnology. As the recent commotion over that last factor suggests, it will also require an open mind.

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