This week UPA II celebrated its first anniversary of second innings. In the year gone by, the nation has seen lots of ups and downs, unfortunately there were many more downs than ups.
First let’s see some ups and the highlights of the incumbent government over last one year. Image of PM as a clean person remained intact. No major corruption scandal came in fore front related to any government policies though Raja issue is a bloat but is the legacy of the UPA I and Tharoor issue had more to do BCCI politics than anything else. No major terror attack from across the border. Changes in education sector. Sports ministry reigning in heads of various sport bodies. India coming out of recession to a large extent. These are the few things which could give us some feel good.
Now lets look at the some major let downs which this government did through its actions and inactions. Though we have a clean Prime Minister but he is just not interested in asserting himself to push through political, bureaucratic, judicial & police reforms. There is no movement on any of these reforms and they are needed so badly that delay of few more years would completely destroy the basic democratic fabric of this nation.
We have been lucky that no major terror attack took place from across the border but we are not so lucky in the matter of internal threats. Maoists are the biggest threat and the Home Ministry and its leader the Home Minister are clueless on how to deal with this menace. It is not just that there is no uniformity in thoughts of the leaders of the UPA but also there are many voices which are speaking and that too in different tone and languages. Home Minister of this country is going from tv studio to tv studio to keep forward his constraints in front of people rather than keeping it in front of the PM and their super boss Sonia Gandhi and debate with them. The menace of Maoists also reflect that flagship scheme of UPA, NREGA has flopped and the benefits of this scheme is not reaching to ‘aam admi’ then where is that money going? Answer we all know.
Finance Ministry is quick to take credit for economic recovery but completely mum over inflation. Some times this lack of will on part of government to reign in the inflation gives the feeling that these high prices are gift from the government to its donors (during election) in party fund. Just look at the statements made by Agricultural Minister on sugar and the profit of sugar companies. There is clear correlation.
Our external affairs minister is so confused that he ensures India’s relationship with most of the major countries is in confused state. We are not sure if China and Pakistan are our friends or enemies. Who is our closest ally is it USA or Russia? No body knows
Speaking of Agriculture and Food & Civil supplies Minister, the lesser said is better. His only agenda seems to be, to ensure his sugar cooperatives and hoarders earn maximum benefits. Every year food items and fruits & vegetables worth thousands of crores are wasted due to inadequate storage and out dated laws (which doesn’t allow the farm producers to directly sell to the customers), but we don’t hear of any development on those front.
Performance of the protégé of agricultural minister, the civil aviation minister is similar to his master and it could be described as at best as dismal. Every year Air India in incurring losses worth more than 5000 crores, and government is pumping in more equity (from our taxes ) to keep it flying, so that next year more looses could be incurred. What is being done to change the situation and what are the changes being implemented? We never hear anything on that.
Result card of other ministers is also not impressive, while surface transport minister want to build 20km road per day but he is no where near that and we are just not aware what bottlenecks are putting brakes on the projects and what is being done to over come them. This is serious as these delays result in cost over run and ultimately we have to pay for it. Our energy minister is another dud, who is completely useless and is not even 10% of his targets.
The list of non performing and use less ministers is long and never ending. Most of these ministers are from socialist era and they always have this temptation to go back to that era where except our breath they controlled every thing else. It is high time that people with fresh ideas to governance are made part of ministries rather than those same dead woods who have been clinging to power for years. How about taking a cue from sports ministry and deciding the maximum tenure of an individual as a minister?
