Political Bickering and Government Inaction Marked the Year in India
Share with others:
NEW DELHI -- An ugly political year in India ended last week with an ugly political spectacle. Shouting and bickering like schoolchildren, Indian lawmakers provided the nation with a televised reality show of the political class in action.
For months, India's politicians have promised to respond to public anger over official corruption by creating an independent anticorruption agency, known as a Lokpal. Yet with minutes ticking down to a midnight deadline -- and with a decisive vote on Lokpal legislation still pending --lawmakers responded late Thursday night to political self-interest: they screamed and postured but ultimately did nothing, allowing Parliament to adjourn for the year without a vote.
Doing nothing might be considered the epitaph of India's political year in 2011. A coalition national government led by the Indian National Congress Party demonstrated little political vision, analysts agree, and even less political backbone. An opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party seemed interested primarily in thwarting the government, offering little in the way of a constructive alternate agenda.
Political stalemate is not always a terrible thing, but the question is how much longer India can afford its increasingly dysfunctional politics. India's dynamic economy, buffeted by the broader global slowdown and uncertainty about Europe, is wobbling precariously: the rupee has weakened badly, economic growth is slowing and private investors are spooked by governmental inaction or timidity on a long list of reforms on economic issues including pensions, land acquisition and foreign investment in retail.
"The problems that the political difficulties are adding to the economic weakness are quite serious," said Ila Patnaik, an economist with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. "We were already in a situation where reforms were not happening. There was a policy paralysis."
Gloom is the prevailing political mood in New Delhi, less than a year after Indian leaders were projecting 9 percent growth. Now the government is scaling down expectations, while some analysts say the growth rate could be far lower. Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express, recently warned that India was at risk of falling into a difficult slowdown, with growth at 6 percent -- a stellar figure elsewhere, but too low to keep pace with employment and demographic pressures in India. He called it "the new Hindu rate of growth," invoking the old insult about India's onetime plodding socialist economy.
First Published January 2, 2012 12:01 am
