A GOVT OF 1.2 BILLION & JUST 112 DECISIONS!

...Nothing happened in parliament, nothing happened in cabinet and nothing happe

ned in the government. For UPA, it started as a year of being firmly in power, b
ut ended in despairing nothingness
Vikas Dhoot & Sruthijith KK NEW DELHI

THE government s stamina for running the course with policy decisions nosedive
d in 2010, an ET analysis reveals. This confirms the widespread sense that gover
nance has suffered in
UPA s second term, with the ruling coalition besieged by corruption scandals, bick
ering ministers and the absence of a strong power centre.
The union cabinet managed to sign off on an abysmally lower number of decisi
ons in 2010 compared with previous years. During UPA s first term, between 2005 an
d 2008, the cabinet took an average of 242.5 decisions every year. The average f
or every year of UPA rule since 2005 is 183 cabinet decisions per year. In 2010,
a year marked with big corruption scandals, parliament paralysis and ministers
working at cross-purposes, the cabinet managed to agree on just 112 decisions, t
he lowest single-year tally since UPA assumed power.
The cabinet is clearly in an internal disarray and your number nicely confirm
s what
everybody suspects already, said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President, Centre for Po
licy Research. The most astonishing development of the past few months has been t
hat it has become evident there is no such thing as a single unified government.
There is this strange spectacle of everyone trying to distance themselves from
having to take a decision and in every possible way from decisions that have alr
eady been taken, he added. Policy activity worse than 2009
ET analysed the number of cabinet and Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
(CCEA) decisions from the beginning of UPA s first innings in May 2004.
The 112 cabinet decisions in 2010 are lower than the 135 decisions taken in
2009, even though typically new governments start slow, and a couple of months s
aw no decisions due to the Lok Sabha elections.
In May 2009, when UPA returned to power, the markets gave an unprecedented t
humbs-up to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The hope was that a Left-free UPA wou
ld go all out on crucial economic reforms as well as other bigticket policy meas
ures. But decisionmaking actually slowed further. UPAII s cabinet has taken 193 de
cisions in 20 months. This compares poorly with the 271 decisions taken in 2008
alone.
Political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said this was due to the contradictory f
orces within the government. There are two contradictory impulses within the Cong
ress party and consequently in the government.
One is the modernising impulse that seeks reforms and pro-market policies. A
nd the other, older impulse is a populist one that seeks large government scheme
s and state spending. In the first UPA, the Left played the latter role. Paradox
ically, the numerically stronger Congress party in the second term of the govern
ment seems more deeply divided in terms of its agenda, said Rangarajan, a profess
or of history at the University of Delhi.
The number of decisions taken by the Cabinet is an important metric by the g
overnment's own admission. In early 2006, the then government gloated that its p
erformance in the previous year was the best in 10 years. As many as 832 cases we
re considered in 136 meetings of the Cabinet and its Committees during 2005, whi
ch exceeds the business transacted in any of the past 10 years. It is significan
t that during 2005, the Cabinet met 61 times, i.e. at an average of more than on
ce a week, to consider 503 cases, an official statement dated January 12, 2006 sa
id.
The trend is similar as far as decisions by CCEA are concerned, though ET in
cluded routine decisions like fixing minimum support price for different crops a
nd paying salary arrears for sick PSUs.
Admittedly, more decisions don t mean better governance. But critical decision
s on big-ticket reforms, left hanging ostensibly due to UPA-I s Left allies, remai
n out of sight. Key financial sector reforms in pensions and banking, bringing a
ntiquated land acquisition and labour laws up to date, or easing foreign direct
investment in sectors such as retail there s little momentum yet behind the reform a
genda in UPA s second innings.
We are at a policy juncture where critical urgent decisions are needed on iss
ues like inflation, and critical longgestation decisions are needed in areas lik
e education reforms, CPR s Mehta said. In all of this, the government's ability to f
orge a consensus within forget convincing others seems to be diminishing, he noted.