Through the strongly political tenor of its interventions, regardless of the issue at hand, the BJP leadership is seeking to exploit the numerous weaknesses of the government
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a spirited speech in Parliament on Friday, but it appeared to observers to be too general, although it was far from irrelevant as suggested by Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, whose attempted rebuttals were overtly political in tone and substance, as one might expect with a general election approaching.
Dr Singh is not wont to speak in Parliament unless the circumstances oblige him to, and that is a pity, for he can be pithy, and this does go down well. The last time he stood in the House to make a plea for himself and his government was over four years ago, before the last general election, when BJP leader L.K. Advani had attempted to taunt him as a “weak Prime Minister”. It was the Prime Minister who carried the day in the end, as the poll results showed.
This time, the UPA government has done two consecutive terms and is inundated with deficiencies. Through the strongly political tenor of its interventions, regardless of the issue at hand, the BJP leadership is seeking to exploit the numerous weaknesses of the government, notably on issues relating to governance, as these impact economic performance and corruption cases. This is the backdrop to the top BJP leadership going to meet President Pranab Mukherjee to urge him to counsel the government to go in for early elections after their jousting with the Prime Minister in Parliament on Friday.
This, of course, is absurd. The President simply cannot be counselled to give unconstitutional directions to a government that commands a majority in the Lok Sabha. If the main Opposition party fancies its chances and is desirous of premature elections, it has the option to defeat the government on the floor of the House. But the BJP’s unusual manoeuvre was little more than an effort to broaden the propaganda space in its favour. From its perspective, this was badly needed too as the government side has just pushed through the Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha, and this makes the non-Congress parties anxious as they worry that the new right-to-food law may give the ruling party an electoral advantage.
While Dr Singh was broadly non-specific as he sought to analyse the economic scene in his much-awaited intervention, he did appear to signal that economic reforms will remain his watchword. His mention in this context of insurance and pension sector reforms, the restriction of the demand for gold imports, the curbing of energy consumption (for motorists), the cutting of subsidies unrelated to the lives of the poor, and the goods and services tax (GST) are pointers in the right direction. But what can be actualised is the real question.
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