UPA-2 under Big Business spell

India's ruling United Progressive Alliance has no cause to celebrate its third anniversary in power. It observed it with self-destructive tactlessness, by raising petrol prices by 12%. UPA-2 shows no sense of public purpose. As the contradictory signals on a presidential nominee from its constituent parties suggest, they're pulling in different directions.
The UPA leadership is adrift and bereft of ideas. There are no signs that it can stop the coalition's further decline before the 2014 elections.
UPA-2 squandered the opportunity to fulfil the promises which propelled its return to power. The crucial promise was to build an inclusive, aam aadmi-centric, India, with a less skewed distribution of growth, and greater social cohesion, which could give the minorities and the poor a sense of belonging.
Instead, UPA-2 became a slave to neoliberalism, pampered Big Business, and facilitated plunder of natural resources. Its policies made agriculture unviable for millions of farmers. UPA-2 also got mired in corruption scandals.
Inclusive growth by definition means growth that benefits all, rapidly reduces poverty, provides public services to the underprivileged, increases employment and incomes, and narrows inequalities between individuals, groups and regions.
None of this has happened. The fruits of India's GDP growth have largely accrued to the top 10%. Poverty has intensified in many states while high malnutrition rates have proved persistent.
Employment has annually grown by 0.8% -- less than half the addition to the workforce. Access to public services has deteriorated. Income inequalities have widened. Opening up retail trade to organised business and foreign investment has undermined the livelihoods of millions of petty traders.
Despite setbacks, UPA-2 hasn't given up on allowing 100% foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail. Nor has Prime Minister Singh stopped pushing the giant Korean-origin POSCO steel project -- despite its rejection by three official committees on unassailable grounds.
Indeed, obsessed with the "India Brand Equity" concept, his office is setting up a Special Purpose Vehicle to grant super-fast clearances to infrastructure, mining and industrial projects although they don't conform to India's environmental and forestry laws.
Industry lobbies are stridently campaigning against a fictitious "policy paralysis." They demand "second-generation reforms" -- greater privatisation of public enterprises, liberalised investment and trade, and dismantling of even meagre labour protection.
They seize upon every sign of a slowdown, and every move to downgrade India's investment rating by Standard and Poor, as an argument for yet more neoliberal policies. They raise a false alarm about India sliding into a deep Europe-style recession.
Yet, Western credit-rating agencies shouldn't be given much credence. Their standards are politically motivated. If they were to apply to the US Spanish indebtedness norms, the world's biggest FDI recipient would become a no-investment destination. Spain's public debt-to-GDP ratio is 69%, the US's is 103%.
India, with a ratio of under 60%, fares much better than France (86), Germany (82), the UK (86), Japan (210) or the US.
India now attracts over $50 billion in FDI, up from under $5 billion a decade ago. Its savings rate has risen to 33% of GDP from 25% in the 1990s.
The problem isn't FDI or GDP growth. It's the quality of growth and what it does for people. India has become a more unbalanced, strife-torn and unhappy society, with reduced human security and tattered social cohesion.
Yet, the government tackles the resulting discontent with brute force. This is painfully evident in the central tribal belt, where Naxalism has flourished, fed by deprivation of millions from access to common property resources like forests, grazing lands and water bodies.
Equally significant is the repression of protests against destructive projects like POSCO and Tata Steel in Orissa, mines in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Goa, dams in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the Northeast, and nuclear power projects at Koodankulam (Tamil Nadu), Jaitapur (Maharashtra), Mithi Virdi (Gujarat), Fatehabad (Haryana), Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh) and Chutka (Madhya Pradesh).
Yet another UPA-2 failure is inaction over the Sachar committee report on Muslims and poor design and implementation of programmes to empower the minorities. The UPA won the 2004 election partly because of public revulsion against communal violence. But it hasn't brought justice to the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and Gujarat's 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom.
On foreign policy, UPA-2's record is poor. It has aligned India closely with the United States, eroding options for an independent course in world affairs. Thanks to the US-India nuclear deal, India has locked itself into an inappropriate, extremely hazardous and costly energy path, while abandoning the fight for a nuclear weapons-free world.
On Iran, Palestine, Libya and Syria, UPA-2's unbalanced stand has caused a loss of goodwill for India in the Arab world and Iran.
India under UPA-2 has neglected the vital task of substantially improving relations with its neighbours. It hasn't taken a bold enough initiative on Pakistan through resolving the Siachen and Sir Creek disputes, negotiating nuclear risk-reduction measures, and unilaterally liberalising trade.
India lost a precious chance to seal an agreement with Bangladesh on the Teesta waters issue, which would have removed long-standing bitterness over the Farakka Barrage on the Ganga, which India built without consulting Dhaka.
India facilitated a worthy agreement in Nepal, which deposed the monarchy and brought the Maoists into the mainstream. But through interference on some issues, and inaction on some others, India has since lost goodwill.
On the mass killings of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka during the anti-LTTE military operation, to which India lent intelligence and logistical support, New Delhi's role was deplorable. It abjectly failed to prevent the massacre.
India, a rising power, has joined groupings like the G-20 (comprising the world's 20 major economies), besides BRICS (with Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa), and IBSA (with Brazil and South Africa). It also won a UN Security Council non-permanent seat.
India's elite relishes global recognition, but has no strategy to make the world less unequal and violent. This failure is replicated domestically on a larger scale.

The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.
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