Opinion The frost continues

It is my considered,albeit humble,opinion that there are two reasons why Dr Manmohan Singh’s authority has been so reduced in his second term that he appears to restrict his activities to cutting ribbons,taking the occasional trip to foreign lands and making dreary speeches. The first reason is that until the Bihar election,it was not just the Congress Party but the media that projected Rahul Gandhi as India’s real prime minister. This must have embarrassed the man who was in fact prime minister,so he retired quietly into the shadows.

The second reason is the revival of an aggressive and influential National Advisory Council (NAC). The NGO types who constitute Sonia Gandhi’s kitchen cabinet are not shy of asserting their right to make laws and policy in areas as varied and serious as making a new land acquisition law and a very dubious law to control communal riots. The NAC is made up of amateur do-gooders so,in making new laws,they have shown no qualms about encroaching into the territory of state governments. Chief ministers have objected to the Communal Violence Bill but none have shown the courage to reject MNREGA even if it eats into their own welfare schemes. How can anyone object to giving destitute people guaranteed employment? How can anyone object to giving Adivasis forest land even if it will mean the end of our forests? The NAC is so powerful that its members never hesitate to attack government policy and always make it sound as if they speak for Sonia Gandhi.

So the Prime Minister of India has found his role dangerously diminished and this has encouraged his ministers to get up to all sorts of high jinx. This must stop. Unless the authority of the Prime Minister is restored,we cannot hope that things will improve before 2014. By then,it could be too late. Already,the steel industry is on the verge of closing down because the Supreme Court decided that the mining of iron ore needed a blanket ban in some districts. One of India’s finest steel companies,JSW steel,is now functioning at less than 30 per cent of its capacity. A stronger prime minister would have appealed to the Supreme Court to reconsider its ban.

If the steel industry collapses,we can forget about better infrastructure,the building of which has already slowed down to an alarming degree. Major projects have been stopped halfway because of problems with government clearances. And,investors (both foreign and Indian) are starting to take their money elsewhere. It is an extraordinary decline if you remember that till ten months ago the atmosphere in the country,both political and economic,was so upbeat that we had happy dreams of competing with China in the not too distant future.

Today the atmosphere in business and financial circles is so drenched in gloom that if someone dares make a comparison with China the sound of cynical laughter fills the air. At this rate,it will not be long before we return to what used to be derided as the Hindu rate of growth. What makes things darker still is that our major Opposition party’s only response to what is India’s most serious crisis in decades is to send their aged charioteer off on another one of his perambulations across India. What we face is a betrayal by our entire political class. Who cares if the atmosphere in the corridors of North Block is less frosty?

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh