Commentary/Dilip Thakore

The end has begun for the 13-party government

It's the beginning of the end of the 13-party coalition government in New Delhi. A tide of opinion is building up within the general populace that the Deve Gowda led coalition government has served its purpose of confirming the popular belief that coalition governments don't work.

Now it's only a question of when rather than whether, the Gowda government will collapse under the growing weight of its contradictions.

The pathetic inability of this unwieldy coalition, which is going through the motions of ruling in New Delhi, to move either forward or back is most tellingly demonstrated by its conscious failure to implement any of the economic policies set out in its Common Minimum Programme.

The well drafted CMP generated considerable enthusiasm when it was made public six months ago at the time the Janata Dal led coalition government under its surprise-choice 'humble farmer' former Karnataka chief minister H D Deve Gowda was sworn into office.

Six months later the CMP remains what it was then: a noble statement of intent.

One of the first promises made in the CMP is that the new government would give some impetus to the long standing proposal to privatise the grossly inefficient, resource guzzling public sector enterprises which straddle the economy like a giant albatross.

In particular, the CMP promised to set up a Disinvestment Commission under the advice of which it would privatise public-sector enterprises in "non-core, non-strategic areas". With great political correctness the CMP declared the government's intent of deploying the proceeds of such privatisation for primary education and health care for the unwashed masses.

Six months later, not even public-sector bread manufacturing or hotel companies have been sold to generate revenue for the discharge of the basic educational and health-care functions of the government.

Each time a proposal is articulated to implement this commonly agreed programme of the coalition government, Big Brother (communists) begin to make threatening noises.

Likewise, the proposed Expenditure Commission which would recommend ways and means to prune government expenditure to rein in the federal government's ominous fiscal deficit, remains a dead letter.

Despite finance ministry claims that government expenditure is under control the indications are that the axe is falling on plan or capital expenditure rather than on non-plan or current expenditure as the prime minister tours the nation promising additional subsidies to farmers, small-scale industry and government servants.

With the result that the stated goal of reducing the federal government's fiscal deficit to 5 per cent remains a fond hope.

Another declaration of intent within the CMP, which aroused considerable enthusiasm, is the target set to attract $10 billion per year into the Indian economy by way of foreign investment.

With Big Brother inside the government firmly set against the inflow of multinational money and expertise into India, this target remains a mirage even as already committed foreign investors are being given the usual run around to get their projects off the ground.

In particular, the Deve Gowda government has attained precious little success in attracting foreign investment into the vital infrastructure industries - coal, power, highways, urban construction, oil exploration - despite the nation's infrastructure tottering on the point of collapse.

On the contrary, the government's proposed infrastructure Development Finance Corporation for which the government made a budgetary allocation of Rs 50 billion has generated little enthusiasm.

Recently the World Bank declined to subscribe to the capital of this yet another public sector company unless the federal government reduces its fiscal deficit and accelerates its privatisation programme.

Meanwhile foreign investors in the scandal-ridden telecom industry are crying foul, alleging that new conditions are being attached after the award of contracts for the provision of basic and cellular services. What a mess!

And presiding over this unholy mess created by a coalition government perpetually speaking with contradictory voices is the unprepossessing personal of Prime Minister Deve Gowda who has emerged as the Uriah Heep of Indian politics.

Those who have read Charles Dickens' monumental novel David Copperfield will remember Heep as the character who concealed his unbridled ambition and unscrupulousness under the cloak of his self-proclaimed humility.

Some men of modest accomplishments grow into the great office into which they are thrust by the hand of providence. Deve Gowda's predecessor Narasimha Rao was such an individual who despite being indicted for a plethora of corruption charges is likely to be sympathetically judged by historians. Deve Gowda is not such an individual.

Despite having been plucked from parochial obscurity and pitchforked into the most powerful office in the nation, he has remained a small-time caste-obsessed, amoral petty politician given to casual corruption.

One of his first initiatives upon attaining the office of prime minister was to mastermind the expulsion of Ramakrishna Hegde, the man who blooded Deve Gowda into Karnataka politics, from the Janata Dal. And even though he has the whole nation to govern, Deve Gowda has not abandoned his role as the chief puppeteer of Karnataka politics, stooping even to dictate the choice of mayor of Bangalore.

Conscious perhaps that he has a short lease on the office of prime minister, Deve Gowda is working overtime to keep his electoral base in Karnataka state politics in good repair.

Meanwhile, to lengthen his lease on the most powerful office in the country, Deve Gowda is playing the same caste politics which have won him handsome electoral dividends in Karnataka on the national stage.

The ghost of Mandal is being resurrected with Deve Gowda promising to extend caste-based employment reservations to private-sector industry.

And even as the fiscal deficit is threatening to run out of control, Deve Gowda has been promising larger fertiliser and food subsidies for farmers and the poor.

Simultaneously, in keeping with the rural tradition of casual corruption, this self-proclaimed humble farmer has no compunctions about taking along whole entourages of friends, relations and hangers-on when he embarks on his foreign tours at public expense.

Gowda often proclaims from public forums that as a humble farmer he does not understand business and economics. But he is perhaps the first prime minister of independent of India to have transformed ignorance into a virtue.

It is this ignorance of democratic conventions and proprieties which have been utilised as an excuse to censor television newscasts and critical literature. And it is this same self-serving naiveté which prompts travel bills without explaining the sources of his extraordinarily large income.

All this at a time when the courts are cracking down on ministerial corruption and the abuse of political office! It's symptomatic of astonishing prime ministerial insensitivity.

Deve Gowda's moral insensitivity seems to be matched by his political insensitivity. Though the Congress party upon whose support in Parliament the coalition government is regrouping with the imminent ouster of Narasimha Rao as the leader of the Congress parliamentary party, it's business as usual for the prime minister.

The epitaph of the 13-party coalition government led by Deve Gowda is clearly discernible on the proverbial wall. Trust this apotheosis of a mediocrity to be unable to read it.

Dilip Thakore is the founder-editor of Business India and Business World and former eidtor of Debonair.