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 Indira Gandhi’s Congress returned to power in the 1980 general elections with the slogan: “a government that works”. The current political dispensation led by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, in contrast, faces the danger of going down as the “government that chokes” at the finish line.

The UPA government appears to have developed an uncanny knack of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Consider its record on foreign policy and national security. It began with bold breakthroughs in relations with the United States, China and Pakistan, but seems incapable of wrapping up any of them.

The civil nuclear initiative with the US, an agreement on the framework to resolve the boundary dispute with China, and a historic negotiation with Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir were all unveiled in 2005. As it enters its final year at the helm, the UPA has lost steam on all fronts.

With America, the government has managed to convert India’s greatest diplomatic triumph, of ending India’s decades long nuclear isolation, into a political threat to its very survival. It is now reduced to posturing against statements from the spokesperson of the US state department on Iran just to please its communist allies.

With China, the negotiations on the boundary dispute have stalled. Worse still, the government’s Tibet vacillations — between pre-emptive appeasement and tough rhetoric — now threaten to destabilise the bilateral relationship. On Pakistan, the Congress leadership allowed the big moments for decisive action to slip away during the last few years. When Pervez Musharraf was at the peak of his power, the Congress failed to grab the opportunity for a settlement of the dispute over J&K.

Sceptics, however, wonder whether a government that cannot clinch an entirely favourable deal like the nuclear initiative has the stomach to finish difficult negotiations on territorial issues with China and Pakistan. Few Indian governments have had a more favourable environment — internal and external — than the UPA coalition for making big strides on national security. This benign ambience was due to high annual economic growth rates, a measure of political stability at home and the growing international perception that India’s rise as a great power is inevitable.

Yet, bureaucratic incoherence and the lack of political courage have repeatedly tripped up the UPA government. Like a deer stuck in the headlights, it seems thoroughly paralysed. The UPA, however, has a few moments left to bestir itself. Decisive steps in the next few days could yet salvage the historic civil nuclear initiative. The prime minister could also use his visit to J&K beginning today to set the stage for reviving the internal and external tracks of the peace process with Pakistan.

If there is one issue other than the nuclear initiative to which the UPA has devoted some energy, it is the Kashmir question. That it has drawn less attention than the nuclear initiative is partly due to the sensitive nature of the back-channel negotiations with Pakistan on Kashmir. Substantive progress in these talks could have been opened for public scrutiny only at the risk of undermining the negotiations.

To his credit, Manmohan Singh has persevered with the peace process, despite lack of enthusiasm within the Congress and the government. Having invested so much in it, it will be a pity if the prime minister holds himself back now. Clearly, the committee approach to Kashmir, the PM’s preferred methodology so far, has reached its limits. Internally, four of the five working groups constituted by the PM as part of his Kashmir Round Table initiative gave their recommendations more than a year ago.

These relate to confidence-building measures within the state of J&K, strengthening ties across the Line of Control, economic development and good governance. The fifth one, devoted to the controversial question of autonomy, cannot be expected to decide on what is essentially a high political question. The negotiations with Pakistan have reportedly made considerable progress on finding a framework for the settlement of Kashmir along four broad propositions — no change in territorial status quo, soft borders, substantive autonomy to the people of Kashmir, and the creation of a consultative mechanism between the divided parts of Kashmir.

On the external track, the PM has an occasion to reaffirm India’s commitment to bringing the negotiations on Kashmir to an early closure and his hopes that the new government in Pakistan will stay the course on improving bilateral relations set by Musharraf. Internally, he needs to announce some major steps in J&K, based on the recommendations of the working groups. There are plenty of good ideas on the table — from improving the human rights conditions to building special development zones, from reducing the size of the security forces to easing travel restrictions, from improving transport infrastructure to trade facilitation across the LoC.

Many of these measures can be implemented unilaterally by India and some will require negotiations with Pakistan. To be sure, New Delhi’s security establishment will caution him against doing anything new in J&K. Prime ministers, however, are expected to lead and not merely follow by the least common denominator defined by the bureaucracy. The PM might want to recall that, exactly five years ago this month, his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Srinagar and unilaterally changed the national discourse on Pakistan and Kashmir. Good leaders must indeed present an occasional fait accompli.

Thanks to Vajpayee’s defiance of the conventional wisdom in his own party and government, we have had one of the most productive periods of engagement with Pakistan. Manmohan Singh has little to lose by pushing the envelope on Kashmir. Failure to act, however, could begin to unravel one of the most significant political initiatives in independent India’s history. For, the expectations in J&K from the peace process have rapidly risen.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg