Feb 22, 1999

In budget season the finance minister's image could do with some spring-cleaning.

Last year, around this phase in the budget-making stage, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha talked about a tough budget, tough decisions and asked to be judged by results rather than big talk. Two weeks from the Union budget, Sinha will have the dubious distinction of being called a finance minister who couldn't see the truth if it came and bit him on the nose. Privatisation is a mess, the trade deficit is inching towards $20 billion, four times what it was in the mid '90s, a quarter of government revenue goes towards paying interest on debt and industrial production is a little over 3 per cent a year, close to the abysmal levels about a decade ago.

All over the world, politicians speak with one voice at home (Sinha's obeisance to swadeshi forces) and another abroad (his recent we're liberal speech at Davos). This double-speak, usually taken as political prudence, is actually confusing in this case. Few are clear about the priorities of this Government, which clears foreign investment in one week and acknowledges organisations like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch in another -- and yet, does little to make the Indian economy competitive. Sinha has also to live down the fact that more people think Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh is in charge of economic policy; he's just the person who messes it all up. Economic slowdown started with P. Chidambaram's tenure. He in turn inherited slack from Manmohan Singh. Even they were ineffective with subsidies and privatisation. But they brought across a vision, the fruition of which was prevented by the politics of the day. The tragedy with Sinha is that nobody credits him with clear vision and therefore all the knee-jerk activity, bureaucratic bungling and blocks are construed as his mistakes while things that go right -- India riding out the South-East Asian meltdown -- are thought to happen despite him. Sinha has one option. Stand his ground and push through tough policy -- unless he really isn't the right man for the job.

And Then Fell Goa

For India's defection maestros it is now feni vidi vici.

It is a comment on Indian democracy that Goa's residents have welcomed the suspension of popular government and imposition of President's rule. Over the past six months, the sea-front state has seen three governments and -- had the BJP-Goa Rajiv Congress negotiations not failed -- was poised for a fourth. At the root of the farce is a split in the Congress and the arrival of defections to Goan public life. Displaying adroit political skulduggery, the state's MLAs have demolished any misgivings about Goa's assimilation into the national mainstream. Despite joining the Union of India only in 1961, Goa is now a fully paid-up member of the dystopic mess called the Indian polity.

Amid cliches like "paradise lost" and "the innocence has gone", it is easy to forget the larger message from Goa. The lesson is actually two-fold. First, the lapsed state Assembly's precarious balance, which left any government with barely a seat's majority. That India's politicians have simply not attuned themselves to fractured mandates, thin majorities and hung legislatures has been apparent for some time now. This has been true for Goa, for Uttar Pradesh and even at the Centre. This is also why the word "governance" has vanished from India's collective vocabulary. The second lesson relates to the sheer impotence of the anti-defection law. It sanctions a split if a third or more of a party's MLAs break away. In tiny assemblies like Goa's this provision is reduced to a joke, with every MLA within smelling distance of becoming a one-man party. The defection cancer requires a final solution. It would be advisable to amend the current Act so that any MP or MLA who leaves the mother party perforce resigns. Some will call this draconian. They should be reminded that the Indian political system is based on competition between parties -- not blackmail by rampant individualism.

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