This has been a week full of report cards and agitations. The completion of the UPA Government’s two years triggered independent surveys rating its performance even while the Government put out a laundry list of its laudable achievements. Many of these are on-going activities which do not deserve any special mention. The quota agitation, to say the least, is distracting and has reopened old wounds in bringing out the inherent divisiveness of the polity. Hopefully, a middle consensus ground would find acceptance before investors enhance their risk perceptions. Add to this the growing Naxalite violence covering 165 districts out of a total of 602.

Risk perceptions are always difficult to quantify, and even while brave economists impute numbers, they have an intangible quality which shapes our decisions. So how has the Government performed in the last two years? The Prime Minister has hesitated in writing any scorecard. A perceived decline in his standing in the survey conducted by The Hindustan Times was contrary to the outcome of the NDTV survey. India Today assigned marks to individual ministers, benchmarking them against last year’s rating, ‘‘based on popular perceptions’’.

First and foremost, since we do not have a Foreign Minister, success in the area of foreign policy does not figure in these surveys and yet improving relations with countries in Asia, profiting from a closer integration with these economies, improved relations with China and persevering with peace initiatives with Pakistan are no mean achievements. Above all, the Congressional approval on civil nuclear arrangements with the US, enabling access to civil nuclear energy and dual technology with strategic partnership, invests the future with multiplier benefits. This would be the UPA Government’s single biggest achievement. It augurs well for enhanced FDI flows from the US and Japan, provided there is no deterioration in the domestic environment and infrastructure improves rapidly.

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