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100 days that lack lustre

Is this government for real, is the question that's uppermost in the mind as Atal Bihari Vajpayee completes a hundred days of solitude. Expressing such a sentiment is a surefire way to bring in hatemail by the gigabytes as I have discovered of late, but for me, personally, the disappointment is all the more acute since this was a government I had voted for.

In a country where nothing more esoteric than the market price of onions have the potential to bring down the government, it is nothing short of a miracle that despite beans going for an unheard of Rs 60 a kg and tomatoes ruling at Rs 30 a kg, there is no palpable ire at the state of things.

Indians are an emotional lot, and in moments of trauma, tend to blame the government -- never mind if they did not vote for it in the first place. Thus, with a measly 27 per cent of the electorate endorsing the BJP-led government's claim to power, it is more than a miracle that street demos have not broken out yet over the bomb ticking in the bazaar.

The sensible among those hit by the skyrocketing prices would know that it is futile blaming an administration that has spent just 100 days in power. But the sections worst hit by runaway prices are not known to sort think things out, they react, often with anger. And as long as the crew headed by Vajpayee does not pay attention to this live bomb of dissatisfaction ticking away, it is doubtful if its 100 days will transform into 365 and beyond.

To do a progress card on a 100-day old government is rather like evaluating the performance of a nursery schooler. Does one talk about the toddler's marathon potential, when he has yet to grasp the knack of walking steady?

In the case of the BJP government, Home Minister L K Advani has made even such a rating futile, by admitting that the only positive thing they have done is to explode the bomb. Call it an attempt to ward off criticism, call it the frank opinion of a man who has seldom hesitated to speak his mind, the end-result is the same.

More than a month since the country went nuclear with a vengeance, I am slowly veering around to the view that the Government of India did not do a proper cost-benefit analysis before getting the nation to embark on a controversial path, but before talking about that, let's try a dispassionate analysis of the government's performance in certain key areas.

Since this is a coalition government, the third such in two years, the least such a government needs to ensure is good vibes among its constituents. On this front -- which I rate even higher than, say, the state of the economy -- the Vajpayee government has failed miserably. No previous government in India has seen the kind of dirty linen being washed in public as has been done by components of this fledgeling government. I mean, it has taken nothing short of a muzzle to keep Jayalalitha's dogs of wars and two Cabinet ministers from going at each other's throats.

It is a sobering thought to recall that the previous coalition government too had complaints of lack of coordination -- but those came not from its constituents, but from the supporting party. Internally, the United Front government moved like the German Wermacht when compared to what Vajpayee has been heading. The home minister had a rather glib explanation for many of the embarrassments Messrs Vajpayee and Co have been subject to, blaming it all on inexperience in governance. This is something that even the previous administration was guilty of, but I don't recall it suffering from such resultant gaucherie.

Since this government has been incapable of managing itself, let's see how it has managed the economy so far. Even to a layman like me, it is obvious that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the management of the economy if the Sensex, the rupee, and foreign investors confidence -- key indicators, all -- are being walloped in the marketplace. Prices of essentials are on booster rockets that even the DRDO cannot match.

The first genuine non-Congress Budget on India saw a rollback of petroleum and urea price hikes. Now, if this is not an embarrassment, if this is not an indication that this government does not know its mind, then someone should tell me what exactly it indicates. The Budget rollback was not the only incident of its kind, even the power ordinance, despite Rangarajan Kumaramangalam's bravado, had to be watered down, to accommodate other viewpoints.

Ayodhya stopped being an issue with the BJP the minute it decided to shed the Opposition colours. Still, the kind of assurances its leaders have been holding out, both in Parliament and outside, are bound to make life extremely difficult when they go back to their familiar role as bulwarks of the Opposition, something that is bound to happen sooner rather than later if Sonia Gandhi ends her vacillation.

Law and order, as the West Bengal government has so eloquently announced to the country, is a state subject, so there is really no point in talking about it here. Even then, there is a tangent to this, which is that the first BJP government at the Centre has not resulted either in any palpable loss of faith or overriding paranoia among the minorities. Life has been as dreary for the Muslims in the ghettos of Bhendi Bazaar and Royapettah as it was under beacons of secularism like Deve Gowda and his ilk.

Kashmir has been a hot subject since the BJP assumed power, thanks to its advocacy of a strong State to deal with inspired terrorism. The new-found machismo attached to the Kashmir issue has obviously more to do with the new toys our rulers have decided to arm themselves with, but this is a dangerous game. Rolling back the wave of militancy across the border is a laudable objective, and there can be few better suited to tackling this issue than Advani, but the home minister would do well to remember that the fight over there is as much against the external foes as for the minds of the local populace. The last 100 days have shown enough willpower to achieve the former, and none at all towards the latter.

The nuclear option exercised by this government, which has been qualified by the home minister as its biggest achievement, is clearly not the placebo it was touted to be. The cost of taking the nation down this path has not been fully computed, and perhaps will never be. This is not to say that the government did something unwelcome, only that it undertook something whose fallout it had either not fully comprehended or is willing to disclose fully.

This, in essence, is the rough story of what this government has accomplished in 100 days. It is no crime to be inexperienced in governance, but what the Vajpayee government has succeeded in doing in the 100 days it has been in office is to parade down Janpath the wetness behind its ears.

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy