We have a Prime Minister who rarely speaks up. May be he believes in work more than words, which is certainly a good thing. But the actions of his government are there to see. And since he does not speak much, when he does speak up he is giving some important message to the people. And we must carefully analyze when and what is he speaking. According to the BJP he is a weak Prime Minister. However, he has shown that he can rise up to the occasion and be as strong as it needs him to be to get a nuclear deal with the USA. So let’s not get into the weak argument of the weakness of the Prime Minister. But it is certainly interesting to recall the rare occasions when he does speak up.
The Prime Minister i guess has not said anything about the ongoing litigation about CVC in the Supreme Court. His government filed an affidavit saying the government was not aware of the case against the present CVC, at the time of his appointment. The Home Minister is saying the case against him was discussed in the meeting, where the names for the appointment of the CVC were being considered. The Court wants to know if the files were sent to the PMO. Perhaps his office will say something about it the court through the attorney general.
Mr. A Raja, an ex-minister of his cabinet is finally behind the bars. He has been charged by CBI of some grave criminal acts of favouring some telecom companies at the cost of huge losses to the exchequer. And remember Mr. Raja was a minister till few months ago. He is not somebody from a distant past. He was a minister in the very same government which the Prime Minister is still heading. Should he say something? The Opposition is demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the scam. The UPA made unsuccessful attempts to crack the unity of the Opposition. The Prime Minister spoke at last saying he would be happy to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament, headed by a senior BJP leader, making the argument for JPC looking weak. But do not we have a right to know that how was Mr. Raja able to play with the policies without the knowledge of the PMO?
But it perhaps is not fair to expect a Prime Minister, who believes in actions, to speak on such small matters. So who from the government are speaking about it? Mr. Kapil Sibbal, who replaced Raja as Telecom Minister, came out with strange mathematical abilities to say that CAG was not right in calculating the losses to the exchequer. According to Mr. Sibbal, there is no loss at all. Montek Sigh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission suggested that not necessarily we evaluate everything from the perspective of the loss to the exchequer. We also need to look at the welfare aspect of a policy. Welfare! Yes you heard right. That is what he said. A firebrand supporter of the economic liberalisation and one who opposes every move to welfare of people by saying it will cost the exchequer is talking about welfare. So what should we think/say about this newly found welfare-ism of Mr. Ahluwalia? What does he say about other welfare issues?
Speaking in seminar in New Delhi, he said that it’s not necessary to pay minimum wages to the workers working under MGNREGA. And the Prime Minister agrees to him. Earlier, in a letter written to the UPA chairperson, he also has expressed his unwillingness to pay minimum wages to these workers. MGNREGA is a flagship welfare programme of the UPA government. The programme grantees 100 days of employment to every poor household in the rural areas. For more than two years there was a cap on any increase in the wages paid to the workers being employed under MGNREGA. The government of India was not willing to pay more than Rs. 100 per day as wage in this programme. People from all over the country has been demanding to raise it to the minimum wages fixed by the state governments under the Minimum Wages Act 1948 and also to link it to inflation index (Consumer Price Index). The National Advisory Council (NAC) advised the government to pay minimum wages to the MGNREGA workers and also link it to inflation. The Andhra Pradesh high court asked the government not to violate the Minimum Wages Act. But the UPA government ignored both NAC (headed by the UPA chairperson Ms. Sonia Gandhi) and the High Court’s directives. Recently the government just linked the wage to the CPI- Agriculture Labour, taking the 2009 wage as base wage (and not 2008 when the wage was fixed at Rs. 100). In spite of linking MGNREGA wage to CPI-AL, it’s lower than the minimum wage fixed by the state governments in seven states. (One should add here that the minimum wages declared by the state governments are also not linked to the price index in most of the cases.) The central and state governments in seven states are violating both the Minimum Wages Act and the Equal Remuneration Act. The Prime Minister is not saying anything.
Besides 2G spectrum, we have been witnessing a series of corruption cases from Commonwealth Games to Adarsh Society, Lavasa and the most recent in the series is ISRO's deal with DEVAS. ISRO comes directly under the PMO. When corruption is almost threatening his government's stability and everyday we are being informed of a bigger scam what all we hear from the Prime Minister is a sermon on how corruption is a stain on our image. Nothing specific just a general remark.
But he recently spoke up on a very important issue. He said that we should not bring back the licence raj in the name of protecting the environment. The statement is being linked by the media to the recent decision of the Ministry of Environment and Forest to give a nod to the POSCO project in Orissa with some conditions. And the conditions are just to ask the company to abide by the Acts passed by the parliament and the R&R policies of the Orissa government, which is anyways has so many lapses. The POSCO project in Orissa is going to be, so far, the largest foreign investment in the country. The controversial project is expected to have immense social and environmental costs and being opposed vehemently by the people who are going to be affected. There are many loopholes in the clearance given to POSCO and there is no proper mechanism to ensure that the company actually compiles with the conditions put by the MoEF.
So our Prime Minister does speak when he sees there is a perceived 'threat' to the mindless industrialization, the high rate of economic growth, and the liberalization policies. The commitments of this government are clearly for the economic growth (reverting back to the 9% and achieving double digit growth as soon as possible). The farmers suicides, displacement of tribal and other poor people, lack of rehabilitation of displaced population, lack of minimum wages to poor, corruption involving billions of rupees nothing is important enough for the Prime Minister. Yes, but the economic growth is something we can not compromise with.
