Government compelled to take ordinance route
The ordinance route may not be the best way to push ahead reform measures, but when the Government is faced with an uncooperative Opposition which obstinately blocks the proceedings of Parliament and does not acquiesce even in the passage of critical Bills of economic change, the Government is left with nothing but the ordinance route.
The other option is to delay the Bills in the hope that the Opposition will come around in the next Parliament session. In the present case of the Insurance laws (Amendment) Bill to raise the cap on foreign direct investment to 49 per cent, and the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill ahead of the e-auction of coal blocks, the postponement until the Budget Session may not have perhaps served the purpose, since the Opposition would have repeated its drama yet again.
Moreover, the delay would have sent the wrong message to both investors and the people at large. The political message would be that a Government which has secured an absolute majority and promised the country fast-paced reforms, has chickened out. The economic message would have been that the Narendra Modi regime did not have the will to walk the talk on key financial decisions.
Ahead of the Union Budget, this would have had a singularly disastrous perception impact. Of course, the ordinance has to eventually get Parliament's approval, and here one hopes that the Opposition will see reason. If it does not and continues with its obstructionist ways, a joint session of Parliament will be the only way out to secure the endorsement of the two Houses.
Reforms cannot wait — especially when the waiting period is indeterminate — nor can they be held hostage to the whims and fancies of opposition parties that have agendas other than the economic well-being of the country.
The Opposition cannot allege that the Bills had been hastily drafted or that there was no broad consensus on them. The insurance Bill, for instance, has been approved by a bipartisan parliamentary panel, and the coal Bill ordinance is being re-issued. The silly reasons the opposition parties have given to block these Bills in the Rajya Sabha, are too well known to bear repetition. Suffice it to say that leaders of these parties put petty politics over national interest.
It is nobody's argument that the ordinance on the two Bills alone can kick-start the economy. But reforms in the coal and insurance sectors are critical. Interestingly, the Congress is on the same page with the BJP here, and yet it torpedoed attempts by the Government to get them the Rajya Sabha's approval. It did not stop for a moment to consider the implications of irresponsible filibustering:
Desperately needed funds would not flow in the insurance sector and the country would face a power crisis if coal is not made available to the power-producing industry. There is something called ‘constructive opposition’, and there is the ‘opposition for the sake of opposing’.