The UPA regime did too many blunders to be counted on hand. The new Government, which came into existence on collective hope, must not repeat those mistakes. It has to deliver the goods to the public
Not all conventions are good. Some of the worst came to the fore when the Congress lost its ground in New Delhi. Then, when the party regained the throne, it mercilessly changed policies and many people were thrown out of their positions. This time around the nation is seeing lesser vendetta, despite having a Government that came to power with a landslide victory. This should have been noticed, but has been sadly overlooked, by the mainstream media.
The best this Government can do is sincerely adopting the good principles that govern some of the existing policies and discard the burden of inherent weaknesses and flaws that the previous Government had been criticised for. Next, it should be careful in awarding offices to ‘policy-brokers’, who are in the habit of misusing their professional capacities, morals be damned.
Many books and countless articles criticising the BJP did not prevent the party from achieving unprecedented electoral success. The bulk of voters really voted for change this time. The ‘change’ here doesn’t mean something that is confrontational. The mandate is for better governance and decisive leadership, which could be run through a single power centre. Besides, the relatively good performance of the BJP-ruled States too brought the party the highest of grades.
In fact, even after drifting away from the JD(U), the BJP got its fair share in Bihar. The reason was it remained steadfast in its opposition to RJD chief lalu Prasad. This gives credibility to the BJP, which has been consistently lacking in the Congress, left parties and other small-time opportunist outfits. So, this is an example of keeping political policy out of petty considerations.
Another important concern is how to keep policy debates separate from the hubris of politics. The political class should reckon that the pulse of the nation works on the basis of policy performance. This does not mean that different political parties have different policies at work in the most crucial areas like rural development, health, education, defence, foreign affairs, and finance.
Over the decades, the nation has missed doing introspection on how policies came into existence and how they performed. The long rule of the Congress had shaped the polity as one-sided, until the emergence of the BJP as the principal opposition party at the national level. However, the aggression of the left and socialist blocs were intermittently strong but equally they drifted from the main policy framework as well.
Policies should be meant for sustenance and development, irrespective of sectors and who is in the fray to channelise these. The attention should be on the end goal. Greater clarity in policy-making will come through a normal culture of consensus among legislators because now, when the Indian economy is hopefully coming full circle with second generation reforms, it will not be pragmatic if the policies are altered with a change in Government.
For ensuring good governance, real and visible works, rather that public euphoria, is the key. This brings good return to those who helped make the development processes possible. The doers keep development at the top of their agenda while the naysayers may not change their course — but it is in such a contested atmosphere that the fate of the nation has to be decided. Practically, a new Government at the Centre has to make its move in the coming time but even some smoke-signals that the decisiveness of the new regime is here to stay is improving public sentiment.
However, unlike the policies, the approach of the new Government should be radically different on an institution like the Planning Commission. This is the time when the Commission’s role has to be assessed properly and given a new direction wherein it will do better management of Centre’s resources than just discriminating against different States.
The Planning Commission should have no role in resource allocation to the States — making federal system work better and giving States a free hand is imperative. The States should get resources solely based on their need, and not on their political affiliations. We have seen this in Bihar where the Congress promised and denied a ‘special status’ to that State depending on changing political conditions. Beyond the narrow confines of politics, this act was condemnable as Bihar has to come out of backwardness and it is in need of resources, rather than the dossier of identity politics.
The Congress-led UPA did too many blunders to be counted on one hand. The new Government has the chance to not repeat those follies. This Government came into existence on collective hope and so it has to deliver. As Mr Narendra Modi has said that it will be good if we work for four years and think of election in the last one.