POLITICAL BICKERING AND GOVERNMENT INACTION MARKED THE YEAR IN INDIA

[Doing nothing might be considered the epitaph of India’s political year in 2011. A coalition national government led by the Indian National Congress Party demonstrated little political vision, analysts agree, and even less political backbone. An opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party seemed interested primarily in thwarting the government, offering little in the way of a constructive alternate agenda.]

 

By Jim Yardley

Raminder Pal Singh/European Pressphoto Agency

Supporters of the anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare 

demonstrated Sunday in Amritsar at the Golden Temple, 

India's holiest Sikh site, after a visit by Prime 

Minister Manmohan Singh.

NEW DELHI — An ugly political year in India ended last week with an ugly political spectacle. Shouting and bickering like schoolchildren, Indian lawmakers provided the nation with a televised reality show of the political class in action.

For months, India’s politicians have promised to respond to public anger over official corruption by creating an independent anticorruption agency, known as a Lokpal. Yet with minutes ticking down to a midnight deadline — and with a decisive vote on Lokpal legislation still pending —lawmakers responded late Thursday night to political self-interest: they screamed and postured but ultimately did nothing, allowing Parliament to adjourn for the year without a vote.

Doing nothing might be considered the epitaph of India’s political year in 2011. A coalition national government led by the Indian National Congress Party demonstrated little political vision, analysts agree, and even less political backbone. An opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party seemed interested primarily in thwarting the government, offering little in the way of a constructive alternate agenda.

Political stalemate is not always a terrible thing, but the question is how much longer India can afford its increasingly dysfunctional politics. India’s dynamic economy, buffeted by the broader global slowdown and uncertainty about Europe, is wobbling precariously: the rupee has weakened badly, economic growth is slowing and private investors are spooked by governmental inaction or timidity on a long list of reforms on economic issues including pensions, land acquisition and foreign investment in retail.

“The problems that the political difficulties are adding to the economic weakness are quite serious,” said Ila Patnaik, an economist with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. “We were already in a situation where reforms were not happening. There was a policy paralysis.”

Gloom is the prevailing political mood in New Delhi, less than a year after Indian leaders were projecting 9 percent growth. Now the government is scaling down expectations, while some analysts say the growth rate could be far lower. Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, recently warned that India was at risk of falling into a difficult slowdown, with growth at 6 percent — a stellar figure elsewhere, but too low to keep pace with employment and demographic pressures in India. He called it “the new Hindu rate of growth,” invoking the old insult about India’s onetime plodding socialist economy.

India’s economic problems may well be confined to the short term or midterm, assuming an improvement in governance. Most analysts still point to the country’s underlying economic strengths, including high investment and savings rates, a consumer-driven domestic economy and a dynamic private sector. But if Indian entrepreneurs have managed to maneuver adroitly around the inefficiencies of the Indian state in the past, analysts say, that will not be enough to keep driving the economy forward.

Politically, India’s federalist democracy is still regarded as the essential infrastructure binding a polyglot nation of 1.2 billion people. Yet frustration with the mechanics of India’s political system is boiling over. Shashi Tharoor, an influential National Congress Party lawmaker, recently questioned whether India should shift from its parliamentary model to a presidential system, a proposition rejected in many quarters.

Parliament, once the proud symbol of India’s democracy, has increasingly become a stage for televised acts of obstruction and political theater. Days of planned legislative activity have been lost to disruptions by protesting opposition parties that lead to forced adjournments.

An analysis by PRS Legislative Research, an independent research group here, found that since 2009 Parliament has been losing more productive time than ever before, while passing fewer pieces of legislation than in recent memory.

“It has seen the most disruptions in the past 25 years,” said Devika Malik, an analyst at the research group.

Public disgust with the political class helped fuel the rise of Anna Hazare, the anticorruption campaigner. His hunger strike during the summer brought out hundreds of thousands protesters and forced government leaders to put the Lokpal issue on the front burner. Yet Mr. Hazare, too, stumbled last week, misjudging his own public mandate. He and his advisers waged a blistering attack on the government’s Lokpal legislation — calling it too weak — and exhorted supporters to again take to the streets.

But the strategy fizzled, and the crowds were sparse. Yogendra Yadav, a political analyst here, said Mr. Hazare’s strategy had backfired, especially since the increasingly strident attacks by his “Team Anna” advisers had continued even after the government met some, though hardly all, of his demands.

“Team Anna overplayed its hand,” Mr. Yadav said. And when the crowds did not rally behind Mr. Hazare this time, the pressure on the political class was suddenly reduced. “They went back to business as usual,” Mr. Yadav added.

The Lokpal fight exposed the hard-knuckled quality of Indian politics. The inability of the National Congress Party to control important allies exposed the weakness of the coalition national government. Mamata Banerjee, leader of the Trinamool Congress Party, a coalition member, ended up blocking government initiatives on foreign investment in retail, on pension reform and, finally, on the Lokpal bill — partly to teach National Congress Party leaders not to take her for granted, analysts say.

Whether Ms. Banerjee, too, overplayed her hand remains to be seen. In India, the ultimate arbiter is the ballot box, and analysts are closely watching five state elections scheduled for this year. Ordinarily, given the ineffectiveness of the national government, the National Congress Party might seem headed for a pasting. But Mr. Yadav said the opposite could be true.

In each of the state elections, Mr. Yadav said, the National Congress Party could actually improve its standing, given the local dynamics of each race, even though public attitudes toward the government have seemingly soured. It is a reminder that the logic of governance and the logic of elections are not always one and the same.


@ The New York Times