by Balbir K. Punj

If the 60th anniversary of Independence is make-or-mar time for UPA-Left relationship, that certainly will be more historical than the "historic" deal that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claims to have struck with the United States. Lest we forget him, one man has come out of the shadows to ask the Left to show Dr Singh where, according to him, the PM and the US belong - the scrap heap. Lest we forget more, the venerable V.P. Singh describes himself as the "natural" ally of the Left, the one man crusader against all that smells of America.

They are anyway poles apart to be in the same boat of power. "They" are reformer-par-excellence Dr Singh and dyed-in-the wool Marxist Prakash Karat with his JNU-stained adviser Sitaram Yechury. The silent Sphinx of 10 Janpath is stated to be the third of the three persons in the boat that still wants to stay afloat. The Reformer feels exasperated whenever the tail show signs of wagging the dog. This time his personal prestige is at stake in the bone he has snatched from the bush; so he is prepared to sink if being afloat means ditching the deal.

Karat is of course not willing to go to the polls as his backyard is burning, as evident from Nandigram in West Bengal and the pitched battle between the CPI(M) chief minister and the party chief in Kerala, the only two pocket boroughs the Left has in this vast country. So the Sphinx is stated to have brought about a compromise - the debate on the deal would be postponed and the UPA-Left would let things cool down.

In the 60th year of independence India's grand old party is once again being infected with the socialist virus. For almost the first 40 years of independence the Marxist influence that created the licence-permit raj, held Indians in the grip of shortages - wait for ten years for a telephone, at least five years for a scooter, go to the MLA for a milk token and to the MP for a gas connection. The only jobs were in government and in government owned institutions - so in some states they had more people than jobs. Those who were infected by the Marxist virus were alone eligible for planning jobs, and while Army jawans shivered in the Himalayas for want of blankets, defence factories produced coffee percolators under the direct orders of the socialists, gadgets that didn't work anyway. The government ran hotels where powerful politicians forced their way in but never paid their bills. And to get a seat on the only domestic airline operating, in case of an emergency, you had to search for an MP who would recommend you for an out of turn seat. If you were lucky the airline staff would not go on strike at the last minute derailing your schedule. All this didn't matter to the airline, where fare paying passengers were considered a nuisance by the privileged crew. Powerful politicians detained the planes anyway till they could find time to rush to the airport to board the plane, which would have been waiting for them on the tarmac for hours while the passengers sweated and prayed for it to take off.

So all credit to P.V. Narasimha Rao for the economic freedom he brought to the people by getting rid of the Marxist virus, despite heading a minority government in Parliament. The then PM inspired the economic reforms, and the then finance minister, Dr Singh, was their architect. In the last 15 years, the waiting lists have disappeared, both rail and airline fares have come down, the banks are pursuing you with offers of loans - compare this with the sham loan melas of the Seventies and Eighties. Instead of you running around for a few dollars to go abroad, there is a virtual shower of dollars and the RBI is trying to stop this shower from causing a flood. Millions from the middle class own stocks whose value has gone up, so much so, some car drivers and lower-level staff have become millionaires with the stocks their companies have allotted to them. Once foreign MNCs were seen as swallowing up Indian firms and so tariff and non-tariff barriers were raised to protect the Indian market from them. Now it is the other way round. Indian companies are buying American and European firms, and it is the MNCs that find Indian enterprises threatening them. As we celebrate 60 years of independence shall we not raise a toast to the reforms that first the Rao-Singh duo carried out and which Atal Behari Vajpayee's government followed up for six years changing the face of India from an international beggar to a global economic powerhouse?

Probably the present Prime Minister's frustration is not so much because of the Left's opposition to his deal with the US, but to the Left's policy of obstructing his reforms. The deal, he said the other day, is historic. He did not forget to add that his reforms were also historic. But the dependence of the UPA government on the veto power of the Left over the reforms he wants to carry out, is bothering him. What was described as "calling the Left's bluff" the other day was a case of Dr Singh reaching the end of his tether. The challenge he threw out to the Left was therefore a cry of frustration from a sincere man who finds himself thwarted in his quest for a place in the country's political and economic history.

So much is being written about the past 60 years. On the eve of 60 years' celebration, Al Qaeda issued a new threat saying that India would be one of its terror targets. There is evidence that the domestic terror base is growing as obvious from the serial train blasts in Mumbai last year and other terror attacks at several places. The tragedy is not that these groups are intent on destroying India's culture and integrity, or that they have developed their own supply chains sourced to our neighbours, the greater tragedy is that a big chunk of the political class is willing to, or is even eager to, back the culture of extremism and fundamentalism.

www.asianage.com, October 07, 2007