It is in this context that the PM’s standing up to the Left has acquired exaggerated significance. Many are hoping that the PM they wish for has finally arrived. But while his standing up to the Left is creditable, it would be yet another instance of wishful thinking to see any larger significance in this assertion of power. There is a sense in which the PM is playing a strong hand. There are things the Left cannot afford to do. First, it has always boxed itself into a corner by insisting that something must be wrong, simply because the BJP says it. The fear of the BJP’s convictions has always trumped its own courage. The Left also knows that bringing down the government on this issue is unlikely to give it any political dividends. The issue may affect its ideological posturing but it does not involve alienating its core constituencies like organised labour. At most it positions the Left to curry the favour of UNPA, whose views on this matter have nothing to do with considered foreign policy options. It can still do the unthinkable; but the incentive structure militates against the likelihood of it taking drastic action. After all, they have never had it so good.

But it could be argued that the PM calling the Left’s bluff on this issue only deepens the mystery about his lack of assertion elsewhere. Reading his Independence Day address heightens these doubts. The sentiments he expresses and some of the challenges he articulates are unexceptionable: who, in their right minds, can be against investment in agriculture, education, a social safety net and transparency in government? But the speech frankly reads like a civil servant’s power point presentation on various programmes rather than a vision statement from someone capable of strong action. More worryingly, in certain key sectors like education, the spending programme seems to be linked to the wrong strategy. For example, there is the call to create 30 Central universities in states that don’t have any; there is a massive spending programme for vocational education. But there is nowhere even the slightest hint that the PM can look the nation in the eye and promise that he can take the necessary action to ensure that he has a truly effective strategy which matches ends and means, outlays and outcomes.

... contd.