Brothers against Islamic terror?

LIBERALS in the office, and I’m sure elsewhere, are in a tizzy following the terrorist attack on the US. Hindutva hawks such as L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, they’re convinced, will now puff up their chests, gloating over the fact that the US now finally sees things in India’s point of view. That there’s a wave of terror funded by Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, that the Kashmir problem is not one of self-determination as Pakistan suggests, but really one of Pak-sponsored terrorism, and so on.

As someone who’s voted BJP all these years, I must confess I’m with the liberals on this one, though for different reasons. As Home Minister, Advani has reason to be pleased about India being taken seriously when she asks the US to lean on Pakistan to give up Dawood Ibrahim. But beyond that, what?

Will India get a lot more US aid or concessional Fund-Bank loans because it is a victim of pan-Islamic terror? Or is George Bush expected to tell his corporate constituency, including Enron, to invest more in India since ‘these folks are on our side’? Clearly not. So let’s get it clear, no matter how serious the Kashmir problem, India’s real problem is not terrorism — we have got over Punjab, haven’t we? Just like the US has not been brought down to its knees by terrorist attacks over the years, India won’t be able to stand tall merely because the US will now co-operate in eliminating terrorism (by the way, that sounds romantic and easy, but it’s easier said than done).

The real issue is of getting India’s economy on track, the government’s ability to govern, and the Opposition’s ability to keep it on its toes. Can you believe that Prime Minister Vajpayee actually told this newspaper last Sunday that having focussed too closely on the survival of his government among a 24-member coalition all these years, he now ‘wants to govern’ in the next two years! And such is the state of the Opposition it never even took this up. A philosophical Vajpayee then did one better. Mocking at himself, he said the decision to remove Urban Affairs minister Jagmo- han wasn’t the most courageous one he’d made, but Jagmohan’s actions (demolishing illegal structures and encroachments) would have affected the BJP’s performance in the municipal corporation elections. That’s governance for you, allowing such petty considerations to play a major role in government functioning — it is though, both charming and disarming of Vajpayee to admit as much.

The point, however, is now what? It’s been close to 18 months since the government began the process of getting back around Rs 500 crore of license fee dues from telecom firm Bharti Limited, but the matter keeps going around in circles, from one Attorney General-opinion to another, and yet another. It now appears that one outgoing Member in the Department of Telecom is not agreeing to what the politicians want, so the hunt is on for a suitable successor — and the matter which should have been a routine administrative one, will now be decided by the Cabinet.

Over Rs 565 crore are overdue from the Rais of Koshika Telecom, but the government has not been able to take a decision on cancelling their last licence. A CBI case has been registered against the group, alleging they forged bills to be able to siphon off hundreds of crore rupees of loans from government-controlled financial institutions, but the Rais haven’t even been asked to appear before the CBI yet — that’s governance for you. Clearly one group in government wanted to seem tough, so they got the case initiated, and now the other’s holding the investigations back.

Other decisions the government’s not taking are equally perplexing. The United Front government had given a commitment, for instance, that the petroleum sector would be completely freed up by April 1 next year. Now in order to do that, subsidies on kerosene have to be cut to just a third of global prices, and those on LPG to a mere 15 per cent — currently, and that’s just six months before D-day, the subsidy per cylinder of LPG sold to consumers is around 45 per cent. Clearly some action should have been taken by now — after all, this is an administrative decision. But even if that had not happened, one would have thought the current crisis (and the volatile oil prices) would have been used as a pretext to cut subsidies. Instead, you have ministers, Ram Naik and Yashwant Sinha, signalling that prices won’t go up.

Another routine decision that should have been taken is that of allowing fertilizer imports as these are very low-priced right now. Yet, in the name of protecting the farmer, this is not being done even though it is well-known that the major part of the fertilizer subsidy doesn’t go to the farmer, but to high-cost fertilizer plants. Several committees have also been set up, as is the wont of the government, to examine the issue. They have all given their recommendations but still no decision has been taken. So, what should have been routine stuff has now been given the honour of becoming a ‘political’ decision which will, naturally, need ‘political consensus’.

All this, of course, is set to change since the PM now wants ‘to govern’, and because of the new-found Indo-US axis. If wishes were horses ...

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