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India’s Government is ideally placed to achieve major reform.
APPOINTING a new cabinet in India is never easy, even after an overwhelming electoral win. Apart from internal party considerations, issues of caste, religion, regionalism and minority expectations across the vast country make the task a political minefield. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in forming his second administration following the decisive win by the six-party United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress party earlier this month, has acted wisely and confirmed perceptions that he is India’s most accomplished leader in recent times. He has been given a golden opportunity to achieve the changes that the country urgently needs to consolidate its position on the global stage and achieve the status of a superpower it believes is its due.
The most important outcome of the election, apart from the unexpectedly large victory achieved by Congress and its allies, was the inglorious decimation of the communists and other members of the Left Front who were so troublesome in Dr Singh’s first term, particularly over the all-important civilian nuclear deal with Washington. The communists, though not members of the Government, had an alliance that the UPA relied on for its parliamentary majority until the Left Front withdrew support over the nuclear issue last year. For much of Dr Singh’s first term, they were heavy lead in his saddle, also holding back key reforms in banking, insurance and the labour market.
The election in which the UPA and its allies won 262 seats in the 543-member parliament, and now the formation of his second administration, has cleared the decks. Though he is 77, Dr Singh is in a stronger position than at any time in the past.
No one has done more than Dr Singh to modernise India’s economy and enable it to move forward from the old “Licence Raj” and the clapped-out days of threadbare socialism when Jawaharlal Nehru and then his daughter, Indira Gandhi, foolishly tied the country to the old Soviet Union’s apron strings. In 1991, as the then finance minister, Dr Singh introduced the bold capitalist reforms to which India’s present economic success is owed. In his first five-year term as Prime Minister, he brought about a paradigm shift in foreign policy and India’s world view, taking it away from its longstanding ties to the former communist bloc and linking it to the West strategically and politically.
Dr Singh now has the opportunity to achieve banking, insurance and labour market reforms and tackle the critical issue of education in a country where 70 per cent of the population is under the age of 35. In his new ministry, Dr Singh has included several “young Turks” who are close allies of Rajiv Gandhi, the 38-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who is seen as his inevitable successor whenever he steps down as prime minister. Among them are Jyotiraditya Scindia, 38, Sachin Pilot, 38, and Jitin Prasada, 36, as well as the youngest person ever to hold cabinet rank in India, 28-year-old Agatha Sangma, one of four Christians included. Balanced against this, Dr Singh has turned to that man for all seasons, Pranab Mukherjee, 74, who has been a member of Indian governments since 1973, including those when socialism ruled the roost, to be finance minister, and the 77-year-old SM Krishna, a former chief minister of Karnataka who has no foreign policy experience, to take on the crucial external affairs role. Only if India loses no time tackling reform will its teeming millions – rather than just the elite – reap the benefits of the changes Dr Singh has brought about so far.
Source: Theaustralian.news
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