THE United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) re-election on a platform promising inclusive pro-poor policies raised the hope that it would consolidate and sharpen its broadly left-of-centre orientation, which paid it rich electoral dividends. There were caveats, of course. After the Left parties broke with the UPA on the India-United States nuclear deal, and more broadly, on foreign and security policies, no one expected the alliance to change its stand on these issues. <

Similarly, although not many expected the UPA government to abandon pro-Big Business neoliberal policies, many thought it would alter the overall mix of economic policies to include a stronger pro-poor thrust than before by beefing up programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Bharat Nirman, and by shielding the underprivileged from the worst effects of predatory industrialisation such as displacement and outright dispossession.

In social policy – including issues such as labour, education, gender, welfare as well as internal security, law and order and social unrest – the UPA was expected to adopt a “soft” and compassionate stance, which abjures force.

On reaffirming secular pluralism and promoting inclusion of religious minority groups, which face discrimination and exclusion, it would hopefully follow up on the Sachar Committee process, which it had itself initiated.

In general, it was thought, with some optimism, that the Congress’ apex leadership would take the election’s lessons to heart and attempt to push the UPA towards more humane and compassionate governance through progressive and inclusive policies that aim to reduce the gross disparities in social opportunity that mark this colossally hierarchical society.

Regrettably, most of these expectations remain unfulfilled. And there are few signs that the government is moving towards addressing these agendas. Processes, which cause and widen disparities and make human-level existence difficult for millions of Indians, continue unreformed. The expropriation of the poor proceeds unabated under predatory enterprises in mining, energy generation, fisheries, food processing and manufacturing.

The capital accumulation process continues to thrive on social bondage. Despite the government’s overwhelmingly important role in capital formation, and the recent spurt in its contribution to aggregate demand, economic decision-making is in the hands of private capital. The fundamental relationships between the government, privileged classes and the mass of the population remain largely unchanged.

Even at the margins, the change effected is inadequate. Consider the Union Budget. The UPA has cut taxes for the elite – with the highest reduction at the Rs.10 lakh-plus bracket – while making the income-tax structure more regressive and further lowering the tax-gross domestic product ratio just when it needs boosting. It has opened a bonanza for specific business groups by giving a 100 per cent tax rebate for investment in oil and gas pipelines, cold chains and agricultural warehousing.

The Budget has arranged for 60 per cent state refinancing of commercial loans for public-private partnerships in the infrastructure. Perversely, it has reduced the excise duty on big cars/sports utility vehicles with engines of 2,000 cc-plus. These, and many other measures, unabashedly favour the rich at public expense.

By contrast, the Budget’s pro-poor steps are more modest and shaky. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has raised spending on social sector programmes, but only moderately and far from uniformly. The allocation to the six Bharat Nirman schemes has been raised by 45 per cent and to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana by 59 per cent.

NREGS’ raised allocation (in Budget Estimates) looks even more impressive at 144 per cent. But it has risen by only 30 per cent over the revised estimate for the last financial year, during which an average of 45 days of work were provided under the scheme. If the coming year’s target is to give 100 days’ employment at a daily wage raised from the present Rs.80 to Rs.100, then the NREGS budget must be raised by 125 per cent plus, not 30 per cent.

Similarly, if the government implements the Right to Education Act and supports compulsory education for the 6-14 age groups, it will need to spend over Rs.10,000 crore a year. But the Budget only earmarks an additional Rs.1,200 crore to elementary and secondary education.

To be fair, it is still early days, and some UPA leaders have hinted that the budget is flexible and will be raised if necessary. But the pertinent point is that the UPA did not use the Budget as an opportunity to convey the message that it is making a decisive shift in its priorities towards the poor and committing itself to big-ticket social sector programmes. It could have done more and better than this.

This applies to other areas too. In education, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal seems bent upon promoting indiscriminate privatisation. The government committed a huge blunder at the time of Independence in not opting for a neighbourhood-based common schooling system, and by glorifying expensive posh schools while creating countless entry barriers for underprivileged students.

This process will be carried to new heights of iniquity and absurdity. Meanwhile, overseas universities, especially universities in the United States, are salivating at the prospect of cherry-picking the best of India’s talent at low cost.

Minister of State for Minority Affairs Salman Khursheed has been at pains to rule out reservations or affirmative action for Muslims even on the lines of the Sachar Committee’s recommendations. He seems to have set his face even against the Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka models of giving Muslims sub-quotas within Other Backward Classes quotas – unless most other States adopt the scheme. But he has offered no alternative.

In general, the Congress leadership is not as tuned into the Muslim empowerment issue as it is alive to Dalit concerns. This is revealed in its recent top appointments, discussed in this Column (Frontline, July 3), and the reluctance to give clear expression to the Sachar recommendations – as opposed to setting up quasi-academic committees on diversity and equal opportunity, whose appropriateness (especially the latter’s) is questionable for Muslims.

Even greater than all these flaws is the UPA’s utterly deplorable, tough “strong state” approach to internal security issues, especially to the naxalite/Maoist question. The government claims it has a two-pronged strategy: fighting the Maoists with police methods, and winning the hearts and minds of their supporters among the poor through “development”.

In reality, there is only one prong: force with which to brutally put down Maoists who are indistinguishable from terrorists by many policemen. A cursory glance at official anti-extremist plans and budgets, with their obsessive emphasis on military means, sophisticated equipment such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and helicopter gunships, and the raising of the menacingly named COBRA (commando battalions for resolute action) force, confirms this.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently stated a new rationale for tackling Left extremists, described as “the greatest threat to internal security”. He frankly related it to making India’s mineral-rich States safe for foreign investors.

This adds a nasty dimension to the militaristic framework within which the Indian state increasingly sees the fight against groups, which stand for the rights of the underprivileged and oppressed, particularly where the state has failed and been captured by elite interests.

The Maoists are misguided in their violent methods, but they rarely use them indiscriminately against non-combatant civilians, unlike terrorist groups far removed from the struggles of the poor.

And yet, the police now indulge in dangerous talk of “the Sri Lanka model” of eliminating extremists with pitiless disregard for the civilians who might be killed.

This must stop at once. Unless the UPA corrects such approaches, it will not be able to project the image – and reality – of inclusiveness and commitment to a left-leaning agenda. It must rethink its conservative position on one pivotal issue.

Like many Western neoliberal economists, UPA strategists seem to think that there is no connection between structured, many-layered economic inequalities, on the one hand, and persistent poverty and widespread deprivation, on the other. The state should ameliorate and combat poverty, especially grinding poverty; but it is not legitimate for it to try to reduce inequalities through taxation or incomes policies.

This view is part of a dogma that ignores structural and historical connections between deprivation and inequality, and the cost advantage that capital seeks through a regime of ultra-low wages, which can be ensured by widespread poverty.

In general, the UPA must decide if it wants to promote a notion of inclusiveness, which is about egalitarianism and social cohesion based on substantive democracy, or whether it will be satisfied with a moth-eaten idea of inclusiveness limited to some anti-poverty measures and welfarism, but which fights shy of embracing social cohesion as a goal.

The second idea goes easily with conservative status quoist policies, which seek to manage neoliberal capitalism. The first goal requires a radical and transformative agenda. But is the UPA ready for this?•