THE UNITED PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE GOVERNMENT

AND THE EMERGING PROBLEMS OF THE INDIAN

PEOPLE

* By Renuka DeviResearch Scholar, Dept. of Political Science, Gulbarga University,

Gulbarga

India is going through its worst political crisis as a state and as

a nation. The present period is marked by misgovernance, nepotism

and anarchy, with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government

under the leadership of the Congress being a mute spectator to the

wanton attacks on the Hindi-speaking populace in Mumbai, and

placating the feudal desires and values of Mayawati in Uttar

Pradesh. On the foreign policy front the government has displayed

similar tendencies, which have resulted in an erosion of our

autonomy and facilitated the increase of U.S. influence and

hegemony in South Asia1.

The UPA has merely joined the bandwagon with groups

making unjust and unconstitutional demands, in the hope that it will

fetch political dividends through unfair means. This is clear from the

actions of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in

Maharashtra, where arsonists and parochial groups were given a

free run for around two weeks and subsequently a safe passage.

Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party, which stood for the rights of the

Hindi-speaking people, was unduly bracketed with the Maharashtra

Navnirman Sena (MNS)2.

These developments raise serious questions about internal

security, governance and constitutional norms concerning the rights

of citizens to take up employment and to settle down in any part of

the country. The linguistic reorganisation of the States has not put

any restrictions on the movement of people across the country. The

only exceptions relate to the frontier regions, special zones and

areas under terrorist attack.

The Congress-led Central government, along with the Bahujan

Samaj Party government led by Ms Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, is

presenting a vested agenda to remain in power at all costs. The two

are overlooking each other’s track record of omissions and

commissions. This is evident in the hand-in- glove treatment

practised by the Congress in the wake of Ms Mayawati’s actions

against police personnel recruited during the Samajwadi Party-led

government. Ms Mayawati’s actions indicate a feudal mindset. She

is bent on creating a chaotic model of governance wherein

governance and public policies are getting highly personalised. Both

the bureaucracy and the state machinery are at the service of her

autocratic attitude and both are scouting to cater to her political and

personal agendas3.

The Congress desperately wants to improve on its negligible

presence in Uttar Pradesh by pandering to the political and personal

demands of Ms Mayawati, ignoring the disastrous implications such

moves hold for governance and security. It has permitted the rise of

a caste bogey in order to settle political scores, and has turned a

Nelson’s eye to the large-scale corruption and nepotism practised

by the BSP government in the name of social justice and the rights

of the marginalised sections4.

While food grain productivity is already on the decline and the

Green Revolution areas are facing serious bottlenecks to growth and

productivity, it is the financially weak farmers who are at the

receiving end of both nature’s fury and the government’s apathy.

The spate of farmer suicides, which go on unabated, has forced

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit to the magnitude of the

agrarian crisis. Despite the government’s projections, the fact

remains that the majority of farmers are keen to abandon

agriculture and move to urban centres looking for jobs, however

menial they may be. In the cities they are confined to the slums. To

add to their agony, their very presence is resented by the same

government, which perceives them as eyesores to the infrastructure

development projects in the cities. Ironically, rural infrastructure is

in a pathetic state: the roads are in bad shape, there are frequent

power cuts, the unavailability of drinking water is widespread, and

sanitation is poor.

But this does not seem to be on the list of concerns of Minister

for Agriculture Sharad Pawar, who is busy with his pet project of

selling the sport of cricket and the players to the largest bidder. His

project has certainly added to the coffers of the Board of Control for

Cricket in India (BCCI). Meanwhile, in the countryside our farmers

look with muted anger for some respite and hope from the UPA

government to fight ever-increasing indebtedness, endemic hunger,

extensive under-nutrition, illiteracy, abject poverty and deprivation.

Mr. Pawar has the luxury of refusing to acknowledge the harsh

realities that confront the farmers, by means of his attempts to

vulgarise and commercialise the game of cricket. He has clearly

displayed his indifference to the agrarian crisis by trying to create a

make-believe world for the common masses, while ignoring the

pitiable plight of the marginalised sections and poor farmers in the

rural areas, who are not only vulnerable but are heading towards a

catastrophic situation. One survey said Mr. Pawar has travelled

around 1,00,035 km for the promotion of cricket. But he has hardly

undertaken any significant visit to address the problems of farmers

in Akola in Vidharbha. Mr. Pawar can do a great service to the

nation, the way he has stood or the cause of ‘cricket’, by being

magnanimous enough to quit as Minister for Agriculture. The UPA

government can appoint him as Minister for Sports to manage

“cricket and its commerce.”5

It has been proved that the swelling stock markets, the

strengthening of the rupee and increasing foreign institutional

investment will hardly touch the lives of our farmers — the people

who feed us. Nearly 150,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide

during the period 1997-2005, while one in two Indian rural children

under the age of three goes hungry. According to the Food and

Agriculture Organisation (FAO), India is home to the largest share of

the world’s undernourished population, and more than 200 million

Indian children, women and men eat less than the daily minimum

calorie requirement for a human being.6

Evidence suggests that over the 1990s concentration of land

ownership increased, with many more households becoming

landless and dependent on casual agricultural labour (45 per cent of

households).

Moreover, since the late 1990s, it has been reported that at

least 60,000 workers have lost their jobs as the international price

of tea has fallen. Millions of others face wage cuts, more insecure

contracts and rising malnutrition that include cases of starvation.

Alarmingly, they form the majority of the country’s population. Such

deprivation means a deep divide, causing economic and social

disturbances and loss of peace. But the UPA government seems to

be unconcerned about the sufferings of farmers, their pain and

miseries. It is happy counting the rising Sensex points7.

There is an urgent need to integrate rural India with the

overall economic growth of our country. The shine of corporate India

can never cover up the poverty and struggle of rural India. The

investments of foreign institutions cannot replace the indebtedness

of the small farmer who has taken one more loan from the village

moneylender after mortgaging his small piece of land.

The United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) has tried to

draw the attention of the UPA government to the clear and present

danger of ignoring the agrarian crisis. This crisis is a national

calamity in the making, given the apathetic attitude of the Congress

leadership and its spin doctors. The UNPA has staged rallies across

the country to mobilise the farmers and the common people to air

their voice to make the government accountable and respond to

their problems8.

Enormous response

Recently a UNPA rally generated an enormous response

across the nation, and it got a shot in the arm with support from the

leadership of its traditional allies on the Left, which joined the rally

to address the farmers’ problems in one voice. This has a significant

impact in terms of attempts to establish a non-Congress and non-

BJP secular and socialist alternative to strengthen the crumbling

edifice of democracy and governance under the regime headed by

the Congress.

Similarly, on the foreign policy front the UPA-led government

seems to pursue lopsided objectives with its growing submission to

the unjust pressures of the Bush regime. It has severely damaged

the national consensus on foreign policy by its blind obsession with

the India-U.S. nuclear deal. The opposition parties are being kept in

the dark about the implications of the deal for national security and

the level of autonomy of India’s foreign policy. What is more ironical

is that the Congress is issuing statements repeatedly that the

nuclear deal will be approved by the UPA government,

notwithstanding the fact that the government does not represent

the majority view on this issue in both Houses of Parliament. Is the

government planning to disregard Parliament and get the deal

approved by subverting the will of the majority?9

The present hobnobbing with the United States has not only

blatantly damaged the national consensus on foreign policy but has

given rise to legitimate fears about the unilateralism of the U.S. in

dictating terms to the Indian state. In the bargain, we also seem to

have lost interest in managing good relations with our neighbours

and traditional friends. Our response to the Iran-Pakistan- India gas

pipeline is ambiguous. India has maintained a stoic silence on the

U.S. imperial games in Iraq, notwithstanding the fact that India has

an important role to play in the present world order.

In this context, the rise of the UNPA is complemented by a

variety of factors. Its credibility comes from the quest of its leaders

who represent various States across the political landscape to have

a common platform to promote a secular and pro-farmer socio-

political order. They have unanimity in terms of empowerment of

the marginalized sections and farmers, and a quest to have an

autonomous foreign policy – which are being relegated by the

Congress government by the lopsided models of economic

development10.

NOTES & REFERENCES

1. Mansergh, N.; Lumby, E. W. R.; and Moon, Pondered eds. India: The Transfer of Power 1942-1 947. 12 vols. London: IIMSO, 1970- 19 83. Menon, V. P. The Transfer of Power in India. Bombay: Orient ongman, 1957.

2. Moon, Penderel. Divide and Quit. Delhi: Oxford UP. 1998 [1961].

3. Moore, R. J. Escape from Empire: The Alice Government and the Indian Problem. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982.

4. Mosley, Leonard. The Last Days of the Raj. London, 1961. 5. Naim, C. M., ed. Iqbal, Jinnah and Pakistan: The Vision and the

Reality. Syracuse: Syra6use UP, 1979. 6. Pandey, B. N. The Break-up of British India. London:

Macmillan, 1969. 7. Philips, C. H. and Wainwright, M. D., eds. The Partition of India: 8. Policies and Perspectives 1935-47. London: Allen and Unwin,

1970. 9. Sadullah, Mian Muhammad, compiler. The Partition of the

Punjab 1947. 10. Lahore: National Documentation Centre, 1983.