evaluation report of upa 2 govt 2009 - 2014 by r.m.m

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RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH (Activity of Ekatma Vikas Samiti, regd public trust)

13, Bldg.2, Samrat, Krishna Chandra Marg, Bandra Reclamation, Bandra West, Mumbai 400050

Tel: 9821731281, 9819093008 email: [email protected] www.ekatmavikas.org.in

Ref: RMM/PE/CG/EXTR Date: 29.3.2014 EXTRACTS - EVALUATION OF UPA-II GOVERNMENT’S PERFORMANCE 2009-14

In a democratic country, only eternal vigilance of voters & their institutions ensures health of democracy. Rashtriya Matadata Manch (RMM) has prepared such 5-yr evaluation for NDA government in 2004 and UPA –I government in 2009. RMM now presents its EVALUATION OF UPA-II GOVERNMENT’S PERFORMANCE 2009-14 to voters for public debate. Indian National Congress party had delineated 29 work programs in the manifesto released on the eve of Loksabha elections in 2009. A short review of these has been given in the Appendix no:1. The review shows that the performance is far below the requirement. Overall performance very poor

1. This government is being seen as the most corrupt government thanks to major

scams like 2G, Coal etc. And this is in spite of assertions by Prime Minister that he

himself is above board. But the buck finally stops at him and he has to own the

overall responsibility. PM also said that major corruption issues are from UPA-I era,

people have again given us electoral mandate in 2009; hence these corruption issues

are non-issues.

2. PM bemoaned in his Red Fort address on 15.8.2012 that “lack of political consensus on many issues was impeding rapid economic growth” forgetting that as a PM he had the largest responsibility to forge such political consensus. In fact this government is more adamant and divisive.

3. The array of ill-conceived and inefficiently run entitlement programs (such as rural

employment guarantee, food security and education), which achieve limited welfare gains at the cost of enormous stress on fiscal capacity and foregone public investment.

4. The freebie culture is actively being promoted for last few years by the UPA

government throughout the country. The history of Europe and the US suggests that typically, states provide essential services (physical security, health, education, infrastructure, etc.) first before they take on their redistribution role. The action of UPA government is recipe to societal disaster e.g. experts have pointed out that West Bengal has been ruined because they never bothered to focus on cultivating the habit of hard work and discipline, at personal and societal level, which resulted sinking in poverty for the past 65 years.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.ekatmavikas.org.in/

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5. The growing recourse to "crony-capitalism" policies in key sectors such as telecom (the 2G spectrum allocation scam), mining (coal and iron ore), and land allocation, which have come to light since 2010 and their debilitating aftermaths continue to impact these and related sectors.

6. We have been in a transition phase in creating proper rules for regulation of

resources — coal, land, bandwidth, power. This is positive although sometimes under court pressure. Ours is a robust democracy with checks and balances. But although restraint was put on irrational allocations, the regulatory authorities and procedures are not in place.

7. Another feature is fiscal profligacy with subsidies allegedly for noble objectives like removing inequity. Government has not bothered to ensure beforehand that economy has the revenue to justify this before you make a permanent commitment to spend.

8. Neither entitlements nor rights mean much without strong implementation. Government seems to have steered clear of any radical implementation measures.

9. Amongst emerging markets, India is the most macro-economically vulnerable, with a deadly combination of high fiscal deficits, close to double-digit inflation, and high external deficits financed by short-term foreign capital inflows that may even now be starting to flow out of the country.

10. Our PM and FM sometimes blame the bad state of affairs on the global financial

crisis. But even after this unfolded in 2008 and 2009 we had two boom years. Other BRIC countries are not doing as bad as our country. We are now being counted among ‘Fragile Five’ due to wrong policies and implementation failures during last few years

11. A Delivery Monitoring Unit has been set up in the Prime Minister's Office to review

selected flagship programs, initiatives and iconic projects, with a view to ensuring effective delivery, through steady monitoring by the Ministry concerned. But there are no results. Implementation of big projects has actually slowed down.

12. Outcomes were ignored while allocating budget and incurring expenditures.

Promised outcome budget but just avoided giving figures of actual work against expenditure.

Only some important points have been mentioned above. The overall performance has been assessed at 30% by RMM team in quantitative terms based on all the parameters listed above. This has been covered in Appendix no.3. Future expectations Appendix nos.4 and 5 mention the expectation from the ruling party and the government for the period 2014-19. Appendix no. 2 mentions some important opportunities the country has lost.

Rashtriya Matadata Manch for public debate Evaluation of UPA govt performance 2009-14 Mar2014

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A Document for Public Debate

EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE of

UPA-II GOVERNMENT 2009-14

Presented by RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH


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Publisher: RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH, (an activity of Ekatma Vikas Samiti, regd public trust no. 858/2013GBBSD) 13, Bldg.2, Samrat, Krishna Chandra Marg, Bandra Reclamation, Bandra West, Mumbai 400050. Tel: 25639654, 9819093008, 9869008409. email: [email protected],

Copyright: Rashtriya Matadata Manch (held in wider public interest) (Extracts can be used freely with due acknowledgment)

15th March 2014

RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH Committee Co-Convenor: Shri Anil Gachke – Social Activist, Entrepreneur Gen. Sec.: Prof. Ratnakar Kamat – Political Activist Members: Sameer Bannerjee - Entrepreneur Dr.B.B.Singh - ex-BARC, techno-lawyer AshokBhide, - trade unionist, social affairs expert A.V.Shenoy, - ex-DGM, L&T; Civic Activist D.V.Alate - ex-TECS, public bodies’ affairs expert Ravindra Mahajan - Social Activist

Suggested contribution per copy: Rs 40/



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EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE of

UPA-II GOVERNMENT 2009-14

INTRODUCTION In a democratic country, only eternal vigilance of voters & their institutions ensures health of democracy. It was felt during meetings of Rashtriya Matadata Manch (RMM) that, as responsible & active voters, we must evaluate the performance of the Central & State governments when they complete their scheduled term of 5 years. RMM has prepared such 5-yr evaluation for NDA government in 2004 and UPA –I government in 2009. RMM now presents its EVALUATION OF UPA-II GOVERNMENT’S PERFORMANCE 2009-14 to voters for public debate. To do this evaluation objectively, the parameters for evaluation were first debated. They were finalized as below: PARAMETERS FOR EVALUATION: 1 IDEOLOGICAL ISSUES –PROFESSED & PRACTISED IDEOLOGY 1.1 Ruling Party (Congress) 1.2 Associate parties 2 SOVEREIGNTY, SECURITY, UNITY AND INTEGRITY 2.1 External Security 2.2 Internal security 2.3 Foreign policy 2.4 National Integration 3 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICIES 3.1 Agriculture 3.2 Industry - heavy, medium, ssi, sez 3.3 Infrastructure 3.4 Import, Export 3.5 Energy – electricity, fuels 3.6 Employment 3.7 Public Debt – internal, external 3.8 Water Resource Management 3.9 Modernization, computer technology, critical technologies 3.10 Taxation

3.11 Budgets Review 3.12 Inflation 3.13 Growth Rate 4 GOVERNANCE ISSUES 4.1 Role of PMO 4.2 Intra-UPA/LF relations; relations with opposition 4.3 Center-state relations 4.4 Political v/s national interests 4.5 Criminalization of politics, electoral reforms 4.6 Panchayat empowerment 4.7 Political gains through public funds 4.8 Parliament functioning 4.9 Reservation policy 4.10 Promises kept and not kept 5 SOCIAL POLICIES 5.1 Law & order 5.2 Education 5.3 Health Care 5.4 Infrastructure 5.5 Communication


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5.6 Urbanization 5.7 Justice system 5.8 Corruption 5.9 Ballooning subsidies 5.10 Equality, gender, caste issues 5.11 Poverty 5.12 Adarsh Gram Yojana 6 CULTURAL ISSUES

Appendix no.1- Evaluation of Congress Manifesto Work Programme 2009-13 Appendix no.2- Lost Opportunities Appendix no.3- Rating of UPA-II Government Appendix no.4 - Some Major Expectations from Political Parties Appendix no.5- Expectations from New Government 2014-19

During further meetings of RMM, performance of the Central Govt. was debated. Gist of discussion is being presented below in the draft form for eliciting comments from the experts as well as to empower the voters with the preliminary assessment. Such assessment is a huge task requiring pooling of interdisciplinary expertise as well considerable amount of time & efforts. Nevertheless, the task undertaken has taken some shape & is being presented as an aid towards an informed debate. To keep the length of this paper short, generally, only the conclusions are recorded. The full rationale, the details of discussions, various views considered or illustrations have not been included. OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT Congress Manifesto 2009 Indian National Congress party had delineated 29 work programmes in the manifesto released on the eve of Loksabha elections in 2009. A short review of these has been given in the Appendix no.1 . The review shows that the performance is far below the requirement. Assertion after assuming office Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserted after assuming office after 2009 Loksabha elections, inter alia, the following: 1 The second UPA government is dedicated to building an economically stronger, a socially just, a culturally vibrant, a regionally balanced, a politically participative, a fully educated, a technologically modern, a creative and enterprising India. We rededicate ourselves to these objectives and to the welfare of all our citizens. 2 We have a genuine concern for the well-being of the common man, his hopes and his aspirations. 3 Since our savings rate is as high as 35 per cent, if all work together, we can achieve a growth rate of 9-10 per cent, even if the world economy does not improve. 4 The government has set a 4 per cent growth for agriculture and a double-digit growth rate for manufacturing. 5 The issue of black money which was an election issue will be dealt with. The government promises steps to bring back black money in tax havens.


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The overall performance of the government in the last 5 years is very poor. But before going into this we can see some positive points.

Positive Points The last decade as a whole has seen record growth and pulled hundreds of millions above the poverty line. There has been record spending on infrastructure, record additions to power generation capacity, and a better growth in agriculture. Agriculture has done quite well in these 10 years. The minimum support price that the government provided is not the lone stimulus for increase in food grain production. Procurement by government agencies and availability of subsidized agri inputs have also helped. Monsoons have also been more favorable. The Right to Information (RTI), the Right to Education (RTE) and the Lokpal Act are presented as achievements. But RTI and Lokpal have really come into existence only because of unrelenting campaign and agitations by civil society activists. Ideally Government should be transparent without the RTI, people must have access to education without RTE, and the corrupt should be punished without the cumbersome Lokpal mechanism.

The Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) was announced in 2009-10. The PMAGY, launched on a pilot basis, with an allocation of Rs.100 crore, seeks the integrated development of 1000 villages where the population of SCs is about 50%.

Overall performance very poor

1 This government is being seen as the most corrupt government thanks to major scams

like 2G, Coal etc. And this is in spite of assertions by Prime Minister that he himself is

above board. But the buck finally stops at him and he has to own the overall

responsibility. PM also said that major corruption issues are from UPA-I era, people have

again given us electoral mandate in 2009, hence these corruption issues are non-issues.

2 PM bemoaned in his Red Fort address on 15.8.2012 that “lack of political consensus on many issues was impeding rapid economic growth” forgetting that as a PM he had the largest responsibility to forge such political consensus. In fact this government is more adamant and divisive. 3 The array of ill-conceived and inefficiently run entitlement programmes (such as rural employment guarantee, food security and education), which achieve limited welfare gains at the cost of enormous stress on fiscal capacity and foregone public investment. 4 The freebie culture is actively being promoted for last few years by the UPA government throughout the country. The history of Europe and the US suggests that


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typically, states provide essential services (physical security, health, education, infrastructure, etc.) first before they take on their redistribution role. The action of UPA government is recipe to societal disaster e.g. experts have pointed out that West Bengal has been ruined because they never bothered to focus on cultivating the habit of hard work and discipline, at personal and societal level, which resulted sinking in poverty for the past 65 years. 5 The growing recourse to "crony-capitalism" policies in key sectors such as telecom (the 2G spectrum allocation scam), mining (coal and iron ore), and land allocation, which have come to light since 2010 and their debilitating aftermaths continue to impact these and related sectors. 6 We have been in a transition phase in creating proper rules for regulation of resources — coal, land, bandwidth, power. This is positive although sometimes under court pressure. Ours is a robust democracy with checks and balances. But although restraint was put on irrational allocations, the regulatory authorities and procedures are not in place. 7 Another feature is fiscal profligacy with subsidies allegedly for noble objectives like removing inequity. Government has not bothered to ensure beforehand that economy has the revenue to justify this before you make a permanent commitment to spend. 8 Neither entitlements nor rights mean much without strong implementation. Government seems to have steered clear of any radical implementation measures. 9 Amongst emerging markets, India is the most macroeconomically vulnerable, with a deadly combination of high fiscal deficits, close to double-digit inflation, and high external deficits financed by short-term foreign capital inflows that may even now be starting to flow out of the country. 10 Our PM and FM sometimes blame the bad state of affairs on the global financial crisis. But even after this unfolded in 2008 and 2009 we had two boom years. Other BRIC countries are not doing as bad as our country. We are now being counted among ‘Fragile Five’ due to wrong policies and implementation failures during last few years 11 A Delivery Monitoring Unit has been set up in the Prime Minister's Office to review selected flagship programmes, initiatives and iconic projects, with a view to ensuring effective delivery, through steady monitoring by the Ministry concerned. But there are no results. Implementation of big projects has actually slowed down. 12 Outcomes were ignored while allocating budget and incurring expenditures. Promised outcome budget but just avoided giving figures of actual work against expenditure


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Only some important points have been mentioned above. The overall performance has been assessed at 30% by RMM team in quantitative terms based on all the pararmeters listed above. This has been covered in Appendix no.3. One expert has beautifully penned down the state of affairs “First, the UPA came for the roads sector. They destroyed contracting. They slowed down road construction. They left highways half built…. Then they came for the airline sector. They let Air India suck more money from taxpayers. They let bad regulation destroy the private sector. They let crony banking sustain bad bets. They ensured India would never be an aviation hub…. Then they came for employment. There was some growth. But they decided that the only good employment is that which in the hand of the state. So the NREGA's expansion was seen as a sign of success, not failure. By its own logic, if more people need the NREGA, the economy has failed… Then they came for institutions. This has been Congress DNA for four decades. They drew up a list of institutions that remained unscathed: Parliament, the IB, bureaucracy and you name it. They then went after those. They used institutions as instruments of their political design. They demoralised every single branch of government…. Then they came for the citizens. They used the secularism blackmail to reduce our choices. If you are not with us you are evil they said. Then they infantilised us. You are not capable of exercising choices so we will make them for you. They acted as if we were so stupid that the three topmost leaders felt no need to justify themselves to us….” Another frustrated angry, though uncharitable, one liner says “In effect this is the grand design of UPA Government: keep people poor, argue for state intervention, spend billions and then swindle the allocation.”

Future expectations Appendix nos.4 and 5 mention the expectation from the ruling party and the government for the period 2014-19. Appendix no. 2 mentions some important opportunities the country has lost.

The parameter wise performance assessment is now presented.

EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT – PARAMETER WISE 1 IDEOLOGICAL ISSUES While evaluating the performance of government, it is necessary to first understand what was the professed philosophy/ideology of the government and then take stock of its implementation. 1.1 Ruling Party - Indian National Congress The oft-repeated ideological proclamations of Congress are secularism and socialism. It is pertinent to note that congress never defined in concrete terms what these terms mean to it. Even when they were included in the preamble to Constitution in 1976, no


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specific definition thereof is mentioned anywhere. However the congress manifesto of 1999 had mentioned that secularism in our country means to show equal respect for all religions and to segregate religion from politics. The practice of these principles by congress-led UPA may be evaluated. It is seen that the Congress had always failed to show equal respect for all religions or also to segregate religion from politics. The very mention of religious minorities defeats both the principles. The tilt in favor of religious minorities often creates anti-majority bias in administration and also, as a reaction to such blatant moves, an anti-minority bias in the mind of majority. The Constitution does not allow religious reservations in employment. Still the Congress is after it for vote bank politics. The other ideological issue, viz. socialism is only a verbal formality. The UPA policies on foreign investments, disinvestments in PSUs, participatory notes, benami transaction routes, SEZs (treating SEZ land as foreign territory) are all anti-socialism. Interestingly the Congress functionaries in government and party hardly ever talk of socialism. It has been subjected to silent burial. 1.2 Associate parties - Other constituents of UPA Being only regional parties, they do not seem to have any national ideology to enable any evaluation on this count. Furthermore, these parties being mostly owned and managed by individuals and their families, they even fail to deliver goods to the people of their respective states. The central ministers of these parties blatantly utilize their position for partisan purposes in their states. They also endeavor to extract benefits for their states by brazenly bending the rules. 2 SOVEREIGNTY, SECURITY, UNITY AND INTEGRITY:

2.1 External Security In spite of the talk of cooperation and global village world over, the borders of the country demand eternal vigil. The major problems with varying intensity continue to be infiltration and terrorism. 2.1.1 The ISI factor aiding terrorism through proxy war coupled with military skirmishes for political convenience contiue. 2.1.2 The infiltration issue on Bangladesh borders endorses the gravity of porous borders and political connivance of mainly the Congress. 2.1.3 The change of regime in Nepal saw the end of not only monarchy but also the only Hindu State. Again it appears that UPA government has not been able to build bridges and counter increasing Chinese influence effectively in this important buffer state. 2.1.4 The threat perception on China differs amongst the political parties. China continues to follow its expansionist strategies unabated. The continued claim on Arunachal Pradesh, suppressions in Tibet, a naval base in Myanmar, have not been


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properly countered by UPA. UPA government could also not effectively tackle flooding of Bharatiya markets with Chinese goods. 2.1.5 The operations of DRDO seem to have slowed down affecting the indigenous defence capabilities and production. 2.1.6 The delay and the perceived inability in filling up of defence personnel posts has become a serious concern 2.1.7 The neglect of PM and defence minister Antony is showing up in dismal state of affairs with regard to the naval equipment. 2.1.8 Many important items like aircraft carrier, submarines, main battle tanks have been delayed. News items suggest that several other important defence purchases have been postponed since even budgeted funds are not being made available by finance ministry. 2.1.9 Since the real test of defence preparedness can be seen only in actual war, which is at present a distant possibility, the knowledgeable people need to monitor it vigilantly and keep people informed about it. 2.2 Internal security 2.2.1 The terrorist attacks continue unchecked. While the foreign aided attacks take place in any part of the country at will, the local groups do not lag behind - ULFA in Assam, other groups in NE states, Huriyat & others in J&K, IM & others in various parts. 2.2.2 The menace of naxalites is expanding day by day 2.2.3 The UPA leaders appear to hesitate to take action against the terrorists fearing that any action again terrorists will result in loss of Muslim votes. Thus these leaders, in their own mind, brand entire Muslim community as sympathizer of terrorists. This also means, for Muslim votes the national security is being sacrificed. 2.3 Foreign policy Thanks to globalization & liberalized economic policies, the foreign policy has become more economics-centric than defence oriented. 2.3.1 Tilting towards US has not brought any good results. The current diplomatic episode demonstrates that. Bharat is buying billions of dollars of military equipment from the Americans but the government is not able to leverage it for beneficial policies. 2.3.2 Bharat still does not seem to have become the regional leader with blow hot blow cold relationship with neighboring countries. They, on one hand, continue to be suspicious about Bharat and on the other do not mind daring her in whatever way they can. Thus Bangladesh or Myanmar are not ready to supply oil and gas to Bharat but go ahead with China. 2.3.3 The tussle for Asian leadership with China continues. The Nehruvian blunder of declining Security Council post and offering it to China still could not be rectified. 2.3.4 the present political dispensation could not stand up forcefully enough in the last few years against Pakistan, China or US. 2.3.5 There was a three-week long incursion in the Depsang valley near the India-China border in Ladakh. It was a military standoff; it was described by the external affairs minister (Salman Khurshid) as a pimple on a beautiful skin.


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Overall the UPAs foreign policy has failed to give any meaningful dimension in country’s pursuit to become super power.

2.4 National Integration Though the Congress Manifesto 2009 mentions that “Only a united India can fight terrorism” the central government continues its divisive policies of increasing minority-ism, minority appeasement. Prime Minister has made a damaging statement that Minorities have a first claim on the resources of the country, in utter disregard of the sentiments of majority.

The district plans of 80 minority concentration districts have been approved at a total estimated cost of Rs. 2343.75 crore.

It seems that government is not even trying to forge a consensus on social or developmental issues. Its efforts are only limited to getting certain bills passed.

3 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICIES 3.1 Agriculture The agricultural growth has been better in UPA-II period at 3.6% compared to 3.1% during UPA-I period. There has been steady growth in agricultural produce, but the rate of growth is fluctuating and thus causing concern. The reserves of food grains are not getting properly utilized to calm down the markets. The irrigation projects progressed slowly. The non-resolution of river disputes continues. There was hardly anything done on river linking projects. The check-dams of Gujarat have not been given due consideration & importance. The supply of seeds causes grave concern. While the MNCs appear to dominate the production and distribution of seeds, the impact of Patents Act is adverse on farmers and agricultural produce. There has been a grave failure of the government in this area. The policy on fertilizers leaves much to desire. While the undesirable emphasis on chemical fertilizer continues, the minister boasts of subsidies worth Rs.1-lac crores to manufacturers. The vested interests prevent encouragement to organic manures as also the proper use of organic pesticides. The most neglected area has been the R & D for agriculture. The efforts by agricultural universities in this area are meagre in absence of any thrust by government. Avoiding spoilage and wastage of agro products by creating adequate storage capacity in every village and intermediary points gets discussed often. But action on this is not commensurate with the need.


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The aspect of agricultural credit has been of serious concern. The lack of sincere efforts to diagnose the real cause for the suicides by farmers also eludes the permanent remedy. The only measures thought of are the politically motivated, misconceived loan waivers, which at most can be exceptional one time measures. Financial inclusion by encouraging micro-finance agencies, self-help groups, distressed farmer support groups etc. is still not on the required scale. Overall, there is need for long term integrated perspective planning which should take into account the man power planning as well as crop planning along with the pricing policy for agricultural produce. The appeasement measures like favoring sugar lobby and MNCs must be given up forthwith.

3.2 Industry Industrial production has plummeted to zero growth in the last two years. The unprecedented stagnation in manufacturing output, despite the ready availability of cheap, low-skill labour reflects the lack of proper policy and implementation. Share of industry in GDP has stagnated at 15%. New manufacturing policy envisages a rise of manufacturing share in GDP to 25% by 2022 and creation of an additional 100 million jobs. But results are still distant. Continued investment in the manufacturing sector will generate a more stable engine for growth by creating employment for the over 15 million persons entering the workforce every year. The ambitious formation of special economic zones (SEZ) is meeting with stiff opposition for variety of reasons like difficulty in land acquisition, non-availability of promised infrastructure, changing rules, temptation to convert certain areas to residential parks etc. Many states have abandoned this scheme. While service sector is strong it is also fluid and more amenable to relocation within a short span of time. Therefore in the long term, as cost advantages in services dissipate, other countries will be better positioned to effectively compete with India. There are about 26 million micro, small and medium enterprises in the country. They contribute about 45%of the country’s total manufactured output and about 40% of the export income. The sector employs over 42million people. The policy on SSIs shows serious shift in priority. The reservation list of items is almost abolished. The purchase and price preference hitherto enjoyed by SSIs is gradually reduced. The hike in interest rates by banks has resulted into these units forced to pay more interest than large industries.


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There is no policy to make PSUs competitive in relation to private enterprises. There is no concrete policy on loss making units. The UPA government continues to run loss-making units just to please a perceived vote bank. In spite of tall claims, failure to provide sufficient & well-spread infrastructural facilities like power, transport and water is creating serious hindrance in industrial growth and causing regional imbalance. This further accentuates the migration of work-seeking hands from their habitats. The claims of abolition of licence-quota-inspector Raaj are belied by ground realities of administrative obstructionist machinery fraught with corruption. The policy of encouraging foreign enterprises is ill conceived. More sectors are being opened up for them and more items hitherto reserved for SSIs are being allotted to them. The move to allow foreign investment and minority ownership in defence production is fraught with risks. The foreigners manipulate the standards of Indian defence equipment and we are kept one or more steps behind their mother country. 3.3 Infrastructure (also refer 5.4) PM admitted on 3.1.2014 “There were infrastructure bottlenecks. There were bottlenecks in terms of timely clearances of the projects from the point of view of environment and forest.” The widespread cancer of stalled, incomplete and delayed projects, which have reduced growth and burdened the banking sector with a mountain of dodgy loans that weigh heavily on the viability of many public sector banks and weaken overall financial stability. Highway construction has been badly affected due to issue like land acquisition unsolved by government agencies, payment problems and lack of adequate monitoring, among others. Highways are lying incomplete. The initial target of 20 km per day is still below 10km. Air India is almost destroyed during the period of Praful Patel. Now thousands of crores of Rupees are proposed to be sunk in this unit. Banking structure is badly affected by NPAs and that too again through crony capitalism.

Railways services should be strengthened since they supply a cheaper transport and are environmentally much cleaner compare to road transport. But government has failed to really buck up this sector. If any sector is in problem this government has one solution of inviting foreigners and giving them the business. In this case too government is on the verge of allowing foreigners in the railway sector in a big way.


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3.4 Import-Export One important indicator of economic imbalance is the growing trade deficit. Imports of goods now exceed exports by more than 50 per cent. This is partly neutralised by the surplus on trade in services (think IT) and by remittances from non-resident Indians. Still, the total trade deficit is more than 3 per cent of GDP -- the highest in decades.(21.11.2011) We have been steadily losing on exports in trade agreements India-ASEAN agreement on trade in services and investment has been concluded but still not ratified by all countries of ASEAN. India and Asean forged a deal on goods five years ago. (Asean countries are dragging their feet since they have got beneficial deal on goods and now postponing deal on services which may benefit India)

3.5 Energy Electricity The shortages not only continue but are worsening. Only 50% of planned new generation capacity could be achieved. Even of the available power, quality of supply is poor and in some cases the installed capacity is underutilized due to insufficient fuel supply system. The indiscipline by states in power drawal from the grid causes breaks in power grids. The thefts in distribution and transmission losses could not be substantially reduced. When there is dire need to conserve every unit of power, there are rampant wastages especially in metro and urban areas, while the rural areas and agriculture are starving for power. The steps taken in launching the ultra mega power projects are welcome. But they are floundering due to coal problems. There is no thrust forthcoming on research in non-conventional sources of energy as also in manufacturing of low cost equipment. The nuclear deal proclaimed to be a panacea on power shortages has not made any significant difference in this respect as the published statistics suggest. Fuel Oil –the story of oil continues to be of endless delays in exploration and extraction. And the natural fall out is the mounting imports at erratically fluctuating prices and the consequent all-out spiral of rising prices of all commodities and services. Coal –The production of coal has always been lagging the demand. The lack of washing facilities is resulting into multiple adverse impacts hike in transport cost, lowering of boiler efficiency, damage to boilers and higher cost of power generation. The beneficial projects of producing oil and gas from coal are not undertaken for unknown reasons, presumably government succumbing to oil import lobby. Failure on coal front is very obvious. Coal worth some $13billion was imported during 2012-14 when Bharat has world’s fourth highest reserves of coal.


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Ethanol - In spite of dire need to do so, UPA government, perhaps for political or other vested interests, revised the blending of ethanol with petrol initiated by NDA govt. Haryana assembly election in 2005 was won by Congress on promise of free electricity for all farmers. Congress promised same in 2007 election in Punjab but lost to Akalis who also promised same. BOTH THESE STATES HAVE NOW LONG POWER CUTS AND GENERATING COMPANIES ARE RELUCTANT TO SELL ELECTRICITY TO BROKE BOARDS OF THESE STATES. Solar and wind energy companies are waiting for the government to clear subsides amounting to more than Rs 1,000 cr as they stare at potentially unviable projects which they had launched due to the promise of incentives…. The ministry of new and renewable energy is unable to pay the promised subsidies since it has received just a third of its budgetary allocation of Rs 1,521 cr for 2013-14….. To make matters worse, the allocation for 2014-15 has been reduced by as much as 71% to Rs 441 cr. National Grid has been established and this may bring some relief to Southern states as power can now flow to them surplus states of North and East.

3.6 Employment Though full employment has to be the ideal of any proactive government, the UPA government has failed to formulate any policy in that direction. Except the NREGS, which aimed at providing 100 days employment, no positive initiative for alleviating unemployment was taken. Actually NREGS is a back-up and cannot be and should not be a mainstream employment avenue. The Congress wants to take more pride in NREGA than in anything else. By its own logic, if more people need the NREGA, the economy has failed. Neither the government nor the industry could create avenues for new jobs. employment for the over 15 million persons entering the workforce every year.

The failure to create reasonably decent jobs for the burgeoning young population of new job seekers (over 10 million each year), with profound adverse consequences for social and political stability;

The technology policy with a human face (focus on employment and not blind automation) in this regard is also a long outstanding need. 3.7 Public Debt There is significant increase in internal debt. In spite of the FRBM Act, the proper management is lacking. The internal debt of the central government increased from Rs 12,75,971 crore at the end of 2004-05 to Rs 23,56,940 crore at the end of 2009-10 and


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now at the end of Dec.2013 stands at Rs 41,89,929 crore. Such rapid increase in debt

amounts to ‘rinam kritva ghritam pibet’ (borrow and make merry). The external debt of the increased from Rs 5,86,305 crore at the end of 2004-05 to Rs 13,32,195 crore at the end of Sept.2010 and now at the end of Dec.2013 stands at Rs 4,16,421 crore.

The rise in external debt is often moderated by the foreign assets created in the country, and thus depriving proper evaluation and quantification of external debt. There is rapid increase in the Bharatiya assets owned by the foreigners but these are not reported. The relevant statistics of foreign assets in the country should be authentically published to assess the total indebtedness to foreigners.

3.8 Water Resource management UPA is committed to (i) assessment of feasibility of linking rivers, (ii) settling long pending disputes on rivers and water sharing and (iii) ending water shortage in cities and providing drinking water in urban & rural areas. But river linking projects have been kept in cold storage even before assessing feasibility. All interstate disputes about water sharing are landing in courts. Overall water stress is increasing in the country but concerted action for water conservation, avoiding misuse of water, reducing water footprints etc. is not visible.

3.9 Modernization, Computer and Critical Technology In the field of space science, significant progress is witnessed. However, in other fields no positive long term initiatives by government are seen The performance of DRDO is slowly coming up again. The importance of self-reliance is often neglected in preference to expediency in equipment imports. Rather the government is “import-happy”. A well-formulated technology policy with short term and long-term perspective and emphasis on employment is still not in view. Another neglected area has been the development of critical technologies e.g. manufacture of silicon chips, photovoltaic cells, solar batteries, rechargeable batteries etc. There is not much of progress in manufacturing aircraft engines, bullet proof jackets and critical military equipment like radars etc. 3.10 Taxation To consolidate and carry forward the reforms in direct taxes, a draft Direct Taxes Code, along with a discussion paper, were released for public comment. It aims to improve the efficiency and equity of the tax system and promote voluntary compliance. Failure of government to finally implement this is another example of reforms freeze.


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Implementation of the GST represents serious tax reform and will expand the medium run tax base of the economy. The GST could generate additional annual revenues of about 1.5 per cent of GDP, create an Bharatiya common market, and solve some structural tax problems. This is another failure of government to generate consensus among states.

The taxation policy keeps on revolving round the same concepts like ability to pay, slabs, commodities and newly found area of services to be taxed. A new dimension needs to be given to excise and VAT policy like e.g. tax rates related to good, bad, neutral and dangerous economic activities. 3.11 Budgetary Problems Presentation of the performance / outcome budget is essential to enable evaluation of budget provisions and their end use. In 2003, the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM) came in, binding the Centre to fiscal deficit targets by 2008-09 and to explain the reasons to Parliament if it breached those. The Centre’s revenue deficit was to come down from 4.38% in 2002-03 to nil in 2008-09 and fiscal deficit was to come down to three per cent by 2008-09 from 5.73 per cent in 2002-03, according to the Act. But the actual deficit figures for 2008-09 were 4.4% against nil for revenue and 6% against 3% for fiscal. The fiscal deficit remained high at 6.48% in 2009-10, 5.7% in 2011-12 and 4.9% in 2012-13. Some off-budget items are not included in these deficits. Such a practice must be avoided.

Fiscal Health During 2013-14 Centre’s share in tax revenue is 8.36% but all this is eaten away by just 3 items interest, subsidies and defence spending at 8.39% of tax revenue The recent global economic crisis has proven that the lender/guarantor of last/ultimate resort is the government. Governments have to take over substantial amounts of private sector liabilities in crises and governments have to implement counter-cyclical fiscal policies during steep downturns. Is fiscal consolidation for such an eventuality feasible? The bad news, of course, is the perennial lure of fiscal populism and recourse to various price-distorting subsidies relating to fuels, fertilizer, power, and water. The finance ministry told parliamentary standing committee in December 2012 that it is unlikely to recover 97% of total tax arrears of Rs 2.49 lakh crore. Recoverables include Rs 92,000 crore from Hasan Ali Khan, Rs 20,000 crore from Harshad Mehta, Rs 14,000 crore from Ketan Parekh, Rs 4,000 crore from Dalal group. Fiscal Discipline In order to earn brownie points for containing the fiscal deficit within the budgeted 4.8 percent of the GDP, he is leaving a huge burden of unpaid bills for the next government.


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The under-recoveries of the oil marketing companies alone are said to be over Rs 1.4 lakh crore.This business of rolling over the expenses to cook up the budget figures is akin to a man who borrows from A to pay B and then tells them to settle the issue between themselves while he himself seeks to leave the scene. Likewise, public sector units are being pressured to cough up higher dividends so that the FM can meet the fiscal targets. Coal India Ltd, which has not developed a new mine in years, was made to pay a record interim dividend of Rs 29 per share, which enriched the national treasury richer by some Rs 18,000 crore, including the Rs 3,000 crore dividend tax. This is the 'After me, the deluge' syndrome at work! In March 2014 the Federation of Indian Export Organization (FIEO) has appealed to government to expeditiously clear Rs 19,000 cr refund claims of exporters.These are pending since Octorber 2013 and may soon touch Rs 25,000 cr Similarly solar and wind energy companies are waiting for the government to clear subsides amounting to more than Rs 1,000 cr as they stare at potentially unviable projects which they had launched due to the promise of incentives. The ministry of new and renewable energy is unable to pay the promised subsidies since it has received just a third of its budgetary allocation of Rs 1,521 cr for 2013-14. To make matters worse, the allocation for 2014-15 has been reduced by as much as 71% to Rs 441 cr. This only shows how precarious is the budgetary situation when even high priority energy security is not attended to.

3.12 Inflation It could also be said that the last few years have been the worst on inflation. Level in Nov. 2013 was 7.5% (WPI) & 11.2 (Retail). The finance minister referred in his last speech to the latest wholesale inflation rate as 5.05%, consumer price inflation is much higher at 8.79%. Latest available figures for Feb 2014: WPI- 4.78%, CPI-8.1%. (Economic Times 10.3.2014, pp3) PRICE RISE DURING 10YEARS OF UPA-II ITEM Wheat Rice Milk

Rs/Kg in 2004 9 10 14

Rs/Kg in 2014 30 32 58

% rise 233 220 314

On 3.1.2014 PM said “And I have explained that the reasons why price rise took place are reasons beyond our control, because international commodity prices are rising, because international energy prices are rising. These were the factors which made it difficult for us to control prices as effectively as we could have done.” But economists say the inflation is mainly due to the profligacy of the government.

At the start of 2011, almost everybody associated with economic policy making in the government predicted that the inflation rate would decline considerably by the end of the year. What they meant was that the double-digit inflation level, estimated on the


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rise in the wholesale price index, would come down to a more manageable level of five or six per cent. Periodically, new targets were put out to indicate the date by when the inflation rate would be brought down, and almost invariably those targets were missed.

Trouble is, no one in the government knows how to deal with the resulting inflation. On top of this FM is pressurizing RBI governor to lower the interest rates which may further increase inflation.

3.13 Growth Rate In both the two most recent years, 2012-13 and 2013-14, official estimates show that GDP growth was below five per cent, the first time this has happened in two successive years in the last quarter of a century. Industrial production has plummeted to zero in the last two years.

But government functionaries continue to dodge the facts and for them, one word should describe quite aptly: OVERESTIMATION.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee projected a growth rate of a little over nine per cent in his Budget for 2011-12, presented on February 28, 2011, which turned out to be 6.2%. Growth rate came down to 5% in 2012-13. At the start of the financial year 2013-14 FM had said in the Economic Survey that the GDP growth rate will be between 6.1 to 6.7% for 2013-14. But during the first 3 quarters the growth rate is only 4.6%.

Earlier high growth is not an outcome that can be attributed to strong government action or major policy reforms. UPA policies have been only politically sound in the short term (winning in 2009), and economically counterproductive in the medium to long term.

The present crisis is not due to the global financial crisis. At the height of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, the economy experienced a decline in the growth rate to only 6.7 per cent. It then returned to the eight per cent plus level in the following two years. With no major shock to the economy in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, it is not credible to connect the decline to external factors. Instead, its origins must be sought internally viz. in the policy paralysis and profligacy of the government.

4 GOVERNANCE ISSUES 4.1 Role of PMO A fundamental questions that have been agitating the collective conscience of the nation for some time now. Is India a poor country simply because it lacks resources? Or is it poor because it is manages its resources poorly? This puts PMO and the PM in focus. Manmohan Singh government is facing a serious credibility crisis. In a televised address to the nation in June 2004 the PM Dr. Manmohan Singh rightly pointed out “Growth is not an end in itself. It is a means to generate employment, banish poverty, hunger and homelessness and improve the standard of living of the


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mass of our people.” Further, he sagaciously added “Equity and efficiency are complimentary, not contradictory.” There were great expectations of Singh as prime minister; few of which have been fulfilled. His timidity in not contesting a Lok Sabha seat; his lack of judgment when it comes to choosing key advisers; his keenness to win good chits from Western leaders show him in a poor light. Singh is reluctant to travel to most states of the Indian Union, but always happy to fly between continents for G-20 meetings and the like. These successive failures signal a character trait that one does not usually associate with upright and intelligent individuals – namely, a rather desperate desire to cling to office, at whatever cost to one’s reputation, one’s party, and one’s nation. In the early part of 2011, as the evidence of cabinet collusion in the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams accumulated, the prime minister continued to shield his corrupt ministers. Monitoring role of PMO seems to have suffered as each ministry went merrily with its corrupt and indolent practices. The UPA’s problems began when it skewed the balance totally in favour of short-run policies. Massive sums were poured into schemes that were plain efforts at redistribution. Mercifully, resources are no longer the constraints. Hence, it is no more a question of outlays, but outcomes. PM Advisory Councils With the eighth council of advisors in place, no one can accuse Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of being ill-advised. There is the Prime Minister's Council on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). It is a 10-member body, which has representation from the ministries in charge of the small-scale industries, think tanks and expert bodies associated with the development of the sector. It meets only once a year. No one, though, can remember when the Council met last and what its key recommendations were. The second body, of which one hears very little, is the Delivery Monitoring Unit. Granted, this is a body that was set up in fulfillment of the announcement made by President Pratibha Patil in her address to Parliament in June 2009, just after the start of the second tenure of the United Progressive Alliance government. The Delivery Monitoring Unit's task is to monitor the performance of the flagship programmes of the government and prepare reports on how well the outcome of these schemes matches with the financial outlay made for, each of them. We are yet to see any of these reports in the public domain. There is also the Trade and Economic Relations Committee under the Prime Minister, which advises Dr Singh on the various trade agreements India has with different countries. It is an important body and has representation from all the key economic ministries. With the World Trade Organisation talks for the Doha round not making


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much progress, the Committee has of late been busy making suggestions on the various bilateral free trade agreements India has been signing with different countries. Still we are at receiving end in most of the trade agreements losing in export opportunities and giving out more. CAG not seriously taken When the Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB) was privatized, CAG found there was a difference of over Rs 3,000 crore in the total receivables depicted in DVB's balance sheet and that worked out by the consultant -- this allowed a lower valuation in the sale price. Once again, no action. Look at the Action Taken Notes for various CAG reports and there is a huge gap, sometimes as high as 50 per cent. In other words, an exceptionally high proportion of CAG reports don't result in the government taking credible action. Saying and doing nothing or abandoning Meanwhile, do you recall what Chidambaram had said about the Aadhar-based cash transfer scheme? A game-changer! Yes, a game-changer. That had earned the finance minister bold headlines in the national media. Last week, the United Progressive Alliance government of which Chidambaram is the senior-most minister, abandoned the direct cash-transfer of LPG subsidy to the targeted groups. So much then for the efficacy of the self-anointed economic expert! 4.2 Intra-UPA relations; relations with opposition While evaluating the UPA regime, the conduct of the major constituent viz. Indian National Congress vis-à-vis other parties needs to be examined. First and foremost, as a democratic value, the ruling party has to show respect for the opposition parties. The INC appears to have failed in developing healthy relationship with the major opposition party viz. BJP. In fact, even normal relationship was conspicuous by its absence. The attitude of one-upmanship and political considerations prevented the Congress from initiating and developing a dialogue on issues of national importance with the opposition. So also, there were no efforts to bring about consensus on major issues (e.g. Lokpal) In case of other constituents of UPA, there did not seem to be any ideological commitment or guidelines. Accommodating criminal elements of the parties (e.g. LJP, JMM, RJD), succumbing to political pressures (e.g. DMK pressurising the PM), threats of withdrawal of support were all treated as part of political games played by the party heads. In the process, the coalition proved to be fragile, the only adhesive being power and ministerial berths. In general, the Congress failed to present before the country an ideal alliance government both due to its own weaknesses and selfishness and also the no-committal partners, inside and outside UPA.


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4.3 Centre-State Relations: Although the constitution provides for Union, State and concurrent subjects, the center-state relations always assume political dimensions. The relationship involves devolution of taxes, central grants-in-aid, law and order perceptions, assent to state laws etc. The UPA government did not dismiss any state government under article 356. The share of States in the net proceeds of Union taxes has been enhanced to 32% from the 30.5% recommended by the Twelfth Finance Commission. But the non-congress ruled states often have grievance of discrimination on union grants for calamities. Assent to Gujarat’s anti-terrorist Act and Compulsory Voting Bill has been withheld for years. Thus, though there was no major confrontation, the UPA government’s record on Centre-State relationship cannot be labeled as ideal.

4.4 Political Interests v/s National Interests The vote-bank politics in Bharat often precedes over national interests. The UPA government confirmed this often. UPA seems to have an unwritten policy to side indirectly with jihadi terrorists, Muslim separatists under the dangerous assumption that this will strengthen their Muslim vote bank. Keeping the hanging of Afzal Guru in abeyance is one instance of political expediency ascending national interest. Working for reservation for Muslims, even though not allowed by Constitution, is another such instance. Granting of MFN status to Pakistan without reciprocation is also such an act against national interest. The HRD ministry’s tampering of the education system, syllabi and institutions like ICHR etc. are nothing but minority appeasement and vote-garnering gimmicks. In general, the UPA grabbed every opportunity to promote divisiveness in the society for political gains. 4.5 Criminalization of Politics, Electoral Reforms UPA is not serious on these matters. In fact UPA wanted to negate Supreme Court decision to prevent convicts from contesting election. Rahul Gandhi ‘drama’ has stopped this for the present. Criminalization of politics has close nexus with funding. The statutory audit of party accounts has to be ensured as also the publication of Income-Tax returns of the parties. (RMM has published a 64-page booklet DESIRABLE DEMOCRATIC REFORMS –Political, Legislative, Electoral)

4.6 Panchayat Empowerment


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UPA had promised speedy devolution of funds for rural development schemes by panchayats as also crediting such funds directly to the elected panchayats with simultameous devolution of functions and functionaries as well. Nothing much seems to have been done in this respect. It is true that the state governments are mainly responsible for the task of empowering panchayats. But the UPA government did not provide sufficient lead and enthusiasm. The suggestion of Bharat Vikas Sangam to allocated 7% of total revenue to panchayats should be debated and suitably implemented.

4.7 Political Gains through Public Funds The misuse of public funds for political gains has been a chronic disease in Bharat’s polity. The UPA government failed to provide exception. The full-page advertisements in Indian dailies by various central ministries are glaring examples of this. These advertisements prominently carry the photographs of PM and Minister concerned. Also if the head is Congress Minister, the photograph of UPA chief is a must. This is an obnoxious exercise in image building of a non-governmental personality at public cost. This wastage of funds may perhaps be justified if the advertisement is on completion of a project but certainly not for proclamation of a project or stone-laying thereof. Further to claim credit for a project initiated years before is only political obscenity. Another area of wastage of public funds has been the overlapping working of parliamentary committees - consultative and standing committees. The visits by such committees and their output need to be objectively and critically evaluated. Such visits are generally at the cost of concerned PSUs, which dutifully lavishly treat the committee members lest the report does name them adversely. The funds spent for this purpose are never properly related to expenditure on parliamentary affairs.

4.8 Functioning of Parliament The Parliament being Temple of Democracy, the ruling party and the opposition parties are duty bound to care for its sanctity but the lead must be taken by the ruling party .The UPA can not be credited with fulfillment of this duty. Inadequate or no debate is becoming another disease. During the last 5 years total of 118 bills were passed. 27 took 3 or less than 3 hours, 26 were cleared between 2 to 3 hours, 24 with 1 to 2 hours, 11 within half or one hour, and to top it all 20 bills were cleared in 5 minutes for each. Shortening of the periods of sessions, wastage of working hours, thinning of attendance of MPs, deteriorating standard of discussions, stalling of Zero Hour and question hour even by ruling party members have all become the regular features. The MPs seem to be interested more in issues of their constituency than issues of national interest. The admonitions by the speaker go unheeded. The leaders of the UPA must share the major part of blame for this state of parliamentary affairs.

4.9 Reservation policy


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The reservation policy, initially formulated for upliftment of socially and economically backward classes has degenerated into a political expediency in the hands of politicians. Congress now seems to be playing a dangerous game of running with the hare and hunting with the hound. After conceding reservations for a dominant Jat community, now a Congress general secretary does not loud thinking that reservations have lost its value and usefulness. As expected after few days Congress clarified that this is his personal opinion! The same UPA, however failed to see the passage of women’s’ reservation bill mainly due to the opposition of its constituents.

4.10 Promises Kept and not kept The Bharatiya voter has learnt to dispense with the manifesto or CMP as a political exercise in futility containing hollow promises. (See Appendix no.1) Similar is the case with promises made in parliament even though Assurance Committee reviews such promises. Consider the following:

- Promised outcome budget but just avoided giving figures of actual work against expenditure

- Promised reservation for women in Parliament but nothing happens - Strong action promised against suspected terrorists, but Home Minister writes to

be considerate to such persons - Fitting reply is promised to Pakistan antics but nothing happens - As per FRBM act restraint on profligacy is promised but routinely violated

5 SOCIAL POLICIES

5.1 Law & Order The Indian constitution has stipulated law and order as the state subject as such the enforcement of law becomes the responsibility of state governments. Still, the center has to play important role in cases of violation of law involving states. The performance of UPA government on this count cannot be said to be satisfactory e.g. the crimes of fake currency notes, narcotics and drugs or cyber crimes do not appear to have been handled effectively. The conviction rate is critically low. The lack of coordination amongst investigating agencies, their misuse for political gains, the alleged police-politicians-criminals nexus, non implementation of recommendation of National Police Commission are all serious factors impeding the effective enforcement of law. Nothing seems to have been done to trace the funds in foreign accounts, hawala transactions etc. (When the German government offered to provide clues to such


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incidences, the central government failed to respond unlike USA & UK.) The political manipulations to exploit agitated public mind can hardly contribute to create a society of law-abiding citizens when the enforcement agency lacks the will to do so.

5.2 Education The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 was enacted in August 2009. Notifications have been issued for the enforcement of the Constitution (86th Amendment) Act and the RTE Act with effect from 1st April 2010. Sixteen Central universities were established, including conversion of three State universities in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand into Central universities, under the Central Universities Act, 2009. Fourteen such universities have commenced functioning in 2009-10. The UPA government has approved the setting up of six Indian Institutes of Management at Rohtak, Raipur, Ranchi, Tiruchirapalli, Kashipur and Udaipur. Two new IITs at Indore and Mandi started functioning from the academic year 2009-10. Government has also decided to set up 10 new NITs, to be located in Goa, Puducherry, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Schemes and allocations are many but due to lack of rigorous implementation, commensurate results cannot be seen. The quality of education is not being bettered and serious research in academic institutions is going down.

5.3 Health care The plans for availability of life saving and other drugs at affordable price are still on paper. The availability of competent doctors is rare in rural areas. The health services at the public hospitals and primary health centers are deteriorating. The growing trend of specialization is depriving the masses of family doctor institution resulting into stoppage of home visits by doctors. The promise to reexamine feasibility of reviving public sector units for manufacture of critical bulk drugs has remained only a promise. The need for integrating the syllabus to include various systems/pathies is overlooked for long. A modified scheme for mainstreaming of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy has been sanctioned and is under implementation at a total cost of Rs. 675 crore. As part of this mainstreaming activity, 2368 doctors and 2184 AYUSH paramedic staff were appointed during 2009-10.

5.4 Infrastructure (also refer 3.3)


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Water Transport: The Govt failed to seriously consider development of water transport. According to experts the railway transport is five times cheaper than road transport and the water transport is twenty times cheaper for both goods and passengers. Rail Transport: Thus the long distance goods and passenger transport in rail proves convenient. The broad-guage targets are not met nor the railway network is sufficiently spread. However, the implementation of some innovative ideas have shown good results bringing railways into profit. There is still indecisiveness in the matter of use of coal and diesel engines. The railways are in need of expansion and modernization as the existing network is saturated, with freight moving at a pathetic average speed of 22 km per hour. Road Transport: The progress of Golden Quadrilateral is also slow. National highways need to be extended, as they currently constitute only 2% of the national road network.

5.5 Communications 5.5.1 Post & Telegraph There has been steady rise in postal service changes, but the efficiency is still lacking. The delay in delivery is a regular feature. The Govt, which talks of modernization, takes piecemeal and half- hearted steps. While few services are commendably modernized e.g. money orders, others continue to be neglected. In the wake of competition, all out efforts to tone up administrative efficiency and technological improvement are lacking. Often these services do not get the treatment they deserve as public utility services. The shortage of manpower at some places and surpluses somewhere are not property matched. The refurbishing of premises appears to the last priority! A number of extraneous services are dumped on personnel, which act as demotivating factor. There is need to consider segregation of financial services and communication services. 5.5.2 Telephones The performance of the BSNL and MTNL appears to be generally satisfactory, keeping pace with the private competitive forces. However, the BSNL and MTNL services are heavily losing money.. In fact there is no justification for separate existence of MTNL except perhaps internal vested interests.

5.6 Urbanization The urbanization has become an inevitable corollary of the policies pursued over decades. There is total absence of any policy for planned urbanization and regulation. The lack of focused schemes for urban poor is dumping them in unhealthy living conditions. There is no proper planning at macro or micro level even for the implementation of central schemes like JNURM. The neglect of rural development and provision of modern amenities in rural areas is spurring further exodus from rural to urban areas. While there is need for the government to pursue Dr Kalam’s PURA (Provision of Urban facilities in Rural Area), a national mission for eradication of slums is


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necessary. While the funding figures in budgetary provisions appear impressive, their end-use is not very visible.

5.7 Justice System The maxim that a wise should never enter court continues to hold good due to inordinate delay in delivery of justice. The vacant posts of judges, mounting number of pending cases, multiplicity of laws, vested interests of legal practitioners and prosecution machinery etc are all continuing evils. The judicial reforms are only verbal formality. Even the easier measures like curtailing vacations, containing adjournments, shift system etc. are not attempted. In short there is lot that remains to be done. 5.8 Corruption The seriousness to prevent corruption in the government has not been displayed and the following purposeful omissions / commissions continue in spite of appeals of various concerned prominent individuals and organizations:

- government has not acted upon giving permission to prosecute its officers even in serious cases of embezzlements and fraud

- government continues to oppose such mandatory government permission just to shield its officers who may spill beans on them

- the money laundering through import-export, Mauritius and Seychelles routes and Swiss accounts, continues unchecked. Government simply refuses to take action

- when RBI wanted to ban nameless money in bourses, the then Finance Minister opposed this move

- when German government publicly stated that very large amounts (several billion euros) of Indian black money is discovered and that they are ready to cooperate with the Bharatiya government to book the culprits, UPA government refused to proceed on this

- while US has been pressing for list of US accounts in secret Swiss banks and getting it from them, UPA (and also previous NDA) government has been not been even writing to the Swiss banks. Estimated amounts of 1,456 billion dollars are lying in Swiss banks as reported by Sakal dated 12.3.2009

- after making promises with fanfare that outcome budget will be presented in the Loksabha, FM just avoided it since the money has been spent but there is no commensurate progress on ground raising doubts about money siphoning from government accounts

PM is not bothered about allegations of corruption and he dismisses these since he and his party has been reelected to rule! He said on 3.1.2014 “As far as the charges of corruption are concerned, most of these charges relate to the period of UPA-1. Coal block allocation as well as 2G spectrum allocation were both in the era of the UPA-1. We went to the electorate on the basis of our performance in that period, and the people of India gave us the mandate to govern for another five years. So, whether these issues which have been raised from time to time by the media, sometimes by the CAG,


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sometimes by court, one must never forget that they belong to a period which was not the period of the UPA-2, but the period relating to the previous five years, and the people of India entrusted us with new responsibilities. So the people of India do not seem to have paid heed to all these charges of corruption which are levied against me or my party. This is not to say that there was no irregularity. There were irregularities. But the dimensions of the problems have been overstated by the media, by the CAG sometimes, and by other entities.” With such a person at the helm, corruption will thrive.

5.9 Ballooning Subsidies The good governance demands that the subsidies must be kept to a minimum. But it appears that these are being increased indiscriminately. NREGS and Food Security will substantially add to this. 5.10 Equality 5.10.1 Economic equality: Government must publish statistics like GINI’s index which is one measure of economic equality among citizens. 5.10.2 Gender: In spite of lofty statements, the gender equality is still not achieved. The reservation bill for female representation is stuck-up. Even in party executive committees, this could not be implemented. 5.10.3 Caste equality The political vested interests continue to be major hindrance not only in caste equality but the social integration itself. The reservation issue is used to divide society rather than to move towards casteless society.

5.11 Poverty Turning to poverty, the latest official data show that the percentage of the population below the poverty line (Tendulkar definition) has dropped sharply from 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 22 per cent in 2011-12. It is the steepest decline in the poverty ratio ever seen in India. Calculated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Feb 2013, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a comprehensive measure to track hunger globally, regionally and by country. Ranked 65 amongst 79 countries, obviously, India's record in tackling hunger is abysmal. Shocking info is that Malawi (Ranked 45), Mali (49), Uganda (42) Benin (38) and Ghana (20) - mostly poor under-developed sub-Saharan African countries are ranked much above us in tackling hunger. Interestingly, two of our neighbhours - Pakistan (57) and Sri Lanka(37) too seem to have a better record on this matter. So does North Korea (52).


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Under Food Security Act 67% of population will be supplied 62mn food grains at the rate of rice at Rs5, wheat at Rs3, coarse grains at Re1 per kg. Annual expenditure will be Rs 1,25,000 crores. 5.12 Adarsh Gram Yojana The Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) was announced in 2009-10. The PMAGY, launched on a pilot basis, with an allocation of Rs.100 crore, seeks the integrated development of 1000 villages where the population of SCs is about 50%, in five States, viz. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Assam. Each village would be able to avail gap funding of Rs.10 lakh over and above the allocation under rural development and poverty alleviation schemes. Unfortunately there are no reports on public domain about the actual transformation that has taken place.

6 CULTURAL ISSUES The pace with which the globalization is engulfing all countries, the cultural ethos of each country is becoming an issue of concern. If the rulers of the day fail to distinguish between modernization and westernization (Americanization), an avoidable chaos is created amongst the people. It creates a conflict between the cultural values hitherto upheld by the national society and the new values (?) adopted by the elitist minority under the influence of blindly borrowed foreign cultural trends. It becomes the duty of the central government under such circumstances to encourage the national cultural ethos even while allowing the imperative international cultural exchanges .The UPA government did not pay any heed to this important subject, in particular to formulate and implement specific policies on value education, media impact, role of religions (i.e. ways of worship) and strengthening national cultural unity rather than harping on composite culture. The UPA govt failed to realize the importance of Bharatiya way of assimilating the new cultural trends and not implanting foreign blends / brands. In its quest to prove secular, it often displayed partisan attitude against what appeared to concern Hindu society, the mainstay of national culture. Neglect of this fact weakens the national integration and creates separatist tendencies.

7 GENERAL Apart from internal governmental evaluation, the performance of every department and minister must be periodically assessed independent observers too. A promise by the Finance Minister to present a Performance Budget is still not fulfilled. There is no effective monitoring of projects resulting into inordinate delay in their completion. Announcing a project and canceling it after public commotion is not healthy sign e.g. haphazard implementation of SEZ policy. Some trends are worrisome for the future of healthy democracy e.g.

- treating the growing hutments as vote banks, discredit the government


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- unchecked and unpunished criminalization and corruption are not only casting aspersions on government but also adversely affecting the people’s faith in democracy and democratic institutions.

- the assurance for transparent governance is belied. The demands for social audit of public projects, public scrutiny of tenders, audit of political party’s funds are still not conceded

- the money laundering through import-export, Mauritius and Seychelles routes and Swiss accounts, continues unchecked.

8 CONCLUDING REMARKS To evaluate the performance of government on these parameters, there is need for consensus. The aforesaid evaluation of the performance of the UPA government may sound critical but we thought it necessary to put forward facts and views for an enlightened debate. In conclusion we wish to draw attention to some important aspects of Indian Polity: 8.1 The prerogative of the PM The prerogative of the PM to choose his council members and allotment of portfolios is well established. The chief of an alliance partner dictating appointment or dropping of a minister of his party is not a happy situation. 8.2 Working of Alliance Governments The Constitution does not per se stipulate party democracy and party governments in the county through the trend was already set prior to independence based on British model. The existence of only two or three parties did not and does not seem possible in a vast country like ours in near future. The single party rule also seems to have come to an end. The electorate has witnessed two alliance governments led by only two major national parties. The governments without these major political parties or with their outside support were short lived. It is therefore necessary to provide for regulatory mechanism for such alliance governments with a view to ensure stability and avoid the high handedness of smaller parties in the alliance. Also while the voters can elect pre-election alliances they have no say in the formation of post-election alliances cobbled together by parties who fought elections against each other on separate manifestos. There is also the history of parties leaving the alliance or joining it anytime they like, and thus making mockery of representative democracy. 8.3 Need for Better Working of Parliament There is a general feeling that the opposition parties waste the time of Parliament and the ruling parties are aiding in this act. Some drastic change is necessary. 8.4 Debate on the Role of Members of Parliament


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At present nursing the constituency seems to be major role even by serious MPs not to talk of non-serious and inept ones. Contribution in policy making and oversight of government in its entirety through parliamentary means should constitute the major work of a MP. This needs to be debated and proper legal provisions may have to be made to channelize the work of MPs and debar them from extraneous work to make parliamentary democracy a success. 8.5 Drastic Electoral Reforms A new law recommended by the Law Commission of India on Organization of Political Parties in May 1999 should be considered for enactment. Also the pending reforms on election of representatives with 51% of votes, partial proportional representation, state funding of elections, reducing of role of money, totally barring criminals from contests, limiting representation to one person in family, barring persons above certain threshold level of wealth unless he foregoes the same for public purpose, Income Tax dept scrutiny of affidavits by candidates, compulsory prosecution of candidates for wrong affidavits and abnormal incomes by Election Commission or some other agency, banning of voter bribes like free televisions, barring persons or groups opposing democratic spirit etc. need to be acted upon soon before the wrong elements fully establish their unassailable grip on parliamentary form of government.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE URGENTLY Revive Moral Authority The functionaries of new central government will have to restore the moral authority. They will have to lead through their own example. Credible Action to Prevent Corruption In the present muddy political atmosphere of corruption, a beginning and relentless follow up for rooting out corruption is a must and will create an unprecedented goodwill for the new government. Planning for Education and Samyak Vikas Planning for “man-making” education and right development on right lines viz. Samyak Vikas should be a prioty. Reviving Growth Luckily, the savings rate still remains relatively high. Therefore, the next government can at least partially revive growth through a handful of pragmatic steps without any recourse to foreign capital. First, the next prime minister will have to appoint a pragmatic environment minister who will take quick decisions. The protection of environment is important, but it must be balanced against the need to keep the growth process moving forward. Besides, even when the decision is negative, it must be made swiftly.


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Second, the prime minister will have to quickly assure the bureaucracy that he stands behind all their legitimate decisions and that there is no place for a witch-hunt in his administration. Third, he will need to forge a closer relationship with the state governments, which must provide land, electricity and water for all projects. Finally, the prime minister will need to restore the health of the banks. In recent years, restructured loans have rapidly piled up. In aggregate, non-performing and restructured loans have reached nine per cent of the total loans. WE THUS PRESENT THIS REPORT, LIKE THE ONE ON PREVIOUS NDA AND UPA-I GOVERNMENTS FOR PUBLIC DEBATE. APPENDIX NO.1 – EVALUATION OF CONGRESS WORK PROGRAMME 2009-14 AS MENTIONED IN MANIFESTO 2009 (Party statements are given in italics, evaluation follows after E-) 1 We will guarantee the maximum possible security to each and every citizen. E - The threat of terrorists, both jihadi and left-wing remains as it is. The criminal elements in society are increasing and life for ordinary citizens and particularly for women in cities has become more dangerous. 2 We will ensure the highest level of defence preparedness and also take further steps for the welfare of the defence forces and their families. E – Somehow the defence equipment indigenization programme is not proceeding as planned e.g. all major projects like Main Battle Tank, Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), Light Combat Aircraft, aircraft carrier, submarine etc. are inordinately delayed. Naresh Chandra Task Force on National Security pointed out that in July 2012 that a committee headed by former President APJ Abdul Kalam had set a target of increasing indigenous content of from 30% in 1975 in weapon-systems to 70% by 2005. It is not achieved. Worse, it is still just over 30%. But instead of ensuring the indigenization proceeds fast, our government leaders want even the defence production to be handed over to foreigners. Dept. of Industrial Promotion and Policy of Commerce Ministry released a discussion paper proposing to raise FDI in defence production to 74% with the aim of ensuring technology transfer and obtaining state-of-art technology etc. Long standing demand of defence forces regarding one-rank-one-pension had been ignored but now cleared just on the eve of 2014 election

3 We will accelerate the process of police reforms E- Firstly the directions of Supreme Court have been ignored. Then after lot of plodding some regulations for reforms have been issued by states but generally with loopholes


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for political inference. Centre has been unable to ensure any substantial change for better. Hence we do not see revitalized upright police force. 4 We will build on the success of the NREGA and take the scheme forward E – Government seems to have lost sight of the fact that this scheme is only a back-up for those who do not get any work. There is no evaluation if any substantial work of asset building has been accomplished. Even Ministers like Sharad Pawar are not happy with this scheme. 5 Along the lines of NREGA, we will enact a National Food Security Act E - This promise has been kept. But the scheme has been criticized on various accounts like required huge outlay not available due to slow-down, no proper network to implement this, all previous attempts to better distribution system including PDS have not borne fruit in most of the states, concentrating on cereals and hence distortions in agro-output and consumption pattern may set in etc. The clear picture, however, will emerge after the scheme is really implemented. 6 We will guarantee health security for all E – This is a far cry. The will and the administrative skill to run even available public health apparatus efficiently and to serve the needy are not evident. Primary Health Centres are not functioning due to lack of full staff and non-availability of medicines due to fund leakage. In cities the government and municipal hospitals are not coming us as required. 7 We will ensure comprehensive social security to those at special risk E – Work on this has been done but reports on availability of actual relief to the needy have not appeared.

8 We will be make quality education affordable to everyone E – Government has not worked on this. No discussion paper or committee or task force or scheme for “affordable” quality education has been heard of. Only pet project of scholarships to the backward classes, minorities and educational loan is being presented. In towns and cities entrenched “political educationists” see education as business and are making it costlier. Now even high school and degree education is no longer affordable and is slowly going out of reach of middle class.

9 We will implement a nation-wide skill development programme E – This is an ongoing process and no special thrust or boost has been noticed. On the one hand the industry continues to complain about non-availability of manpower with required skills and on the other educated unemployment is increasing. A government task force has to continuously monitor this skill availability and job-needs mismatch and take steps both in educational institutions and with the entrepreneurs. This has not been done adequately.


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10 We will expand schemes for improving well-being of farmers and their families E – Several schemes exist for the farmers but, it is observed the benefits accrue to only some sections of farmers. Farmers’ suicides continue.

11 We will democratize and professionalize the functioning of cooperatives E – Centre has passed the constitutional amendment but the situation in even the Congress-ruled states has not improved. But this can be pursued by activists from the cooperative fields and results can come over a period of time.

12 We will give even greater impetus to the empowerment of weaker sections of society. E – Empowerment of weaker sections has been done through legislative methods but government has ignored the social awareness programme very necessary for the weaker sections to get real benefits and achieve rapid progress.

13 We will combat communalism of all kinds and caste atrocities with determination E – Fighting communalism is only a rhetoric directed towards vote banks particularly Muslims and Christians. Caste atrocities are going down by themselves due to education and better social awareness. But when such cases emerge the ruling party does not really stand by the victims.

14 We will bring a sharp focus on the special needs of children, especially the girl child E – Schemes have been formulated. We have to await results.

15 We will make elected panchayat institutions financially strong E – As Centre appears to be reluctant to cede powers to states, the states do not really give adequate powers to panchayat institutions. The suggestion of Bharat Vikas Sangam to allocated 7% of total revenue to panchayats should be debated and suitably implemented. 16 We will connect all villages to a broadband network in three years time E – This is another major initiative going sour due lack of thrust from government. If Bharat is to study, transact, consume, shop and read on electronic devices, it needs universal and last-mile connectivity. Bharat Broadband government project aims to connect all of Bharat down to its villages. It remains a case of missed deadlines. What was supposed to have been in place by end-2013 has moved little beyond pilots — fibre being laid in just 40 development blocks covering 800 panchayats. The 20,000-crore project planned to lay down fibre in 250,000 panchayats, providing Internet connectivity to 600,000 villages and deliver services like education, healthcare, egovernance and e-commerce online. Nobody can give a new deadline.

17 We will give special focus to the small entrepreneur and to small and medium enterprises E – SMEs account for 40% of workforce and contribute to 45% of manufacturing output and employ 6 crore persons. Nothing much has been done to better the lot of small enterprises. Consider the following:


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- reservation of various items for SSIs has been abolished without any compensatory measures for getting market for them.

- Medium scale industry is clubbed with micro and small units. This means the latter get relatively neglected.

- The special consideration for credit for small enterprises based on potential is not developed. Their needs for occasional extra working capital and long term loans need to be attended to.

18 We will maintain the path of high growth with fiscal prudence and low inflation E – In essence government has failed in all three viz. high growth, fiscal prudence and low inflation. (see above…. )

19 We will introduce the goods and services tax from April 1, 2010. E – This deadline has long passed. In this government’s character is divisive and it cannot simply push matters persuasively and build national consensus. It has straitjacket of vote bank politics at times undermining national interests.

20 We will give a completely new look to urban governance E - This is a generalized statement. No much change is seen in urban governance. In fact, the urban bodies are unable to perform to expectations due to interference by state governments and are also handicapped due to inadequate transfer of funds and powers to them. In the cities the implementation of Nagar Raj Bills is languishing.

21 We will offer a new deal to our youth to participate in governance E – This is another generalized statement without any specific scheme or schemes.

22 We will protect India’s natural environment and take steps to rejuvenate it E – Apparently the government has not come out with any balanced policy to preserve environment and ensure development. Such a policy needs to be extensively debated and government has to take painstaking efforts for evolving a broad consensus on policy and implementation problems. 23 We will carry out a massive renewal of our extensive science and technology infrastructure E – “Massive” renewal of S&T infrastructure has not been seen. Some additions and replacements routinely happen. Country’s R&D spend was around 0.8% of GDP in 2011-12, the aim is to increase it to 2% but this has not been achieved it languishes at around 0.8%. 24 We will pursue judicial reforms to cut delays in courts E – No major judicial reforms have come to fore. In fact government seems to be at loggerheads with the Supreme Court for recruiting even the sanctioned strength of judges and providing them with adequate facilities and resources to work effectively.


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25 We will continue to be sensitive to regional aspirations E – A lip sympathy statement. If Telengana state was promised, this should have been done in a dignified way. Crores of Rupees and manhours have been wasted due to vote bank politics of Congress. In addition bad blood is created between Telengana and Seemandhra.

26 We will ensure energy security for our country E – This is a declared policy for long. Former President APJ Abdul Kalam presented a plan for this. But somehow the government is not proceeding energetically on ensuring energy security. Consider the following:

- Ethanol use as petrol substitute is not actively encouraged - By providing free and subsidized power, wastage of power on a large scale is

being encouraged - Energy conservation efforts are not getting the boost they deserve - High technologies in solar power field, conversion of low grade coal into gas are

not being pursued vigorously resulting on continuing imports and foreign dependence

27 We will take further steps to preserve and promote our heritage E - This is a specious statement. Even after receiving a rebuff the government continues to support destruction of Ram Setu. It also supports renaming of Shankaracharya Hill after Suleman. Less said the better!

28 We will continue to pursue an independent, pro-India foreign policy E – This is another specious statement. Government not been successful in putting pressure on Pakistan, Maldiv or Sri Lanka and they merrily continue to act against our interests. China is testing the nerve and here government is hiding from its own people intrusions by Chines troops. US is giving a criminal-like treatment to our diplomatic persons and we are not able to put counter pressure even when we buy arms from it worth several billions of dollars. 29 The Indian National Congress will intensify the involvement of overseas Indians in development E- Government has started holding Pravasi Din sammelans. Schemes for returning talented Bharatiyas exist in various institutions like IIT. But no innovative scheme for involvement of overseas Bharatiyas for cutting edge technologies or for technologies refused by advanced countries has not been seen. APPENDIX NO.2 - LOST OPPORTUNITIES Due to lack of initiative we seem to have lost the following great opportunies: 1 Mobile phone manufacture: This could have created thousands of crores worth manufacturing opportunity with thousands of skilled jobs.


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2 Civil Aircraft: We are importing a lakh crore worth civil aircrafts. This market could have been ours if we would have taken steps to manufacture a civil aircraft of 150 capacity. 3 Aadhar: We fail to utilize the opportunity made available by Aadhar. Regardless of the merits of direct cash transfers (which is only one potential application of the biometric identification project), the important point is that Aadhaar seeks to harness technology to strengthen the ability of the state (and also the private sector) to deliver services in the long run. Government has officially abandoned Aadhar for direct cash transfer.

4 Friendly Neighborhood Trade Group: We have really failed to make SAARC work mainly due to intransigence of Pakistan. We should have formed a new trade group Friendly Neighborhood Trade Group (FNTG) of all neighboring countries excluding Pakistan. This will be mutually beneficial for all the countries and will put pressure on Pakistan.

APPENDIX NO.3 – RATING OF UPA-II GOVERNMENT NO. PARAMETER RATING

1 IDEOLOGICAL ISSUES –PROFESSED & PRACTICED IDEOLOGY

1.1 Ruling party (Indian National Congress)

0.3

1.2 Associate parties in govt 0.2

2 SOVEREIGNTY, SECURITY, UNITY AND INTEGRITY

2.1 External security 0.5

2.2 Internal security 0.5

2.3 Foreign policy 0.3

2.4 National Integration 0.2

3 DEVELOPMENTPOLICIES

3.1 Agriculture 0.6

3.2 Industry - heavy, medium, ssi, sez

0.4

3.3 Infrastructure 0.3

3.4 Import, Export 0.2

3.5 Energy – electricity, fuels 0.3

3.6 Employment 0.4

3.7 Public Debt – internal, external

0.3

3.8 Water Resource Management

0.4

3.9 Modernization, computer technology, critical technologies

0.3

3.10 Taxation 0.4

3.11 Budgets Review 0.2

3.12 Inflation 0.2

3.13 Growth Rate 0.3

4 GOVERNANCE ISSUES

4.1 Role of PMO 0.2

4.2 Intra-UPA relations; relations with opposition

0.3

4.3 Center-state relations 0.4

4.4 Political v/s national interests

0.3

4.5 Criminalization of politics, electoral reforms

0.3

4.6 Panchayat empowerment 0.5

4.7 Political gains through public funds

0.3

4.8 Parliament functioning 0.2

4.9 Reservation policy 0.2

4.10 Promises kept and not kept

0.3

5 SOCIAL POLICIES

5.1 Law & order 0.4


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5.2 Education 0.3

5.3 Health Care 0.5

5.4 Infrastructure 0.4

5.5 Communication 0.5

5.6 Urbanization 0.4

5.7 Justice system 0.4

5.8 Corruption 0.1

5.9 Ballooning subsidies 0.3

5.10 Equality, gender, caste issues

0.2

5.11 Poverty 0.4

5.12 Adarsh Gram Yojana 0.4

6 CULTURAL ISSUES 0.1

OVERALL 0.3

APPENDIX NO.4 – SOME MAJOR EXPECTATIONS FROM POLITICAL PARTIES After the elections are over the focus for action is on the new government. But the real thrust for purposeful action can and must come from political parties. The issues mentioned below are crucial and are under debate since long. The ruling party and its allies must issue a public paper outlining its thinking and giving the action points and directions to the persons wielding power in the new central government. Some major issues are: 1 Corruption 2 Tightening foreign economic grip and the remedies 3 Ecological balance 4 Education 5 Agriculture 6 Sampoorna rozgar 7 Democratic reforms (RMM has published a booklet on this) 8 Raising moral fibre of society 9 Common national programme of major political parties – All national parties should come together and try to formulate the common national programme as is recently done in Brazil. They can take help from some eminent persons like APJ Abdul Kalam or CN Rao among others. This will a long way in boosting national morale and give a boost to public and administrative enthusiasm.

APPENDIX NO.5 – EXPECTATIONS FROM NEW GOVERNMENT 2014-19 Rethink Approach to Nation Rebuilding

Presently the need to rethink our approach to National Rebuilding cannot be overemphasized. Our country has made good progress in certain sectors since 66 years of independence. Our strides in increasing agricultural production, setting up an industrial infrastructure and educating a pool of human resources that can handle state of art technology, are particularly noteworthy. Yet at the same time, the list of unfinished tasks is equally long. Proliferating freebies and entitlement culture is eating into the societal roots by doing away with the motivations to strive for fulfilling personal, family and societal aspirations and healthy work ethos is being discouraged. Dignity of labour is also getting undermined.


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But the worst failure is on social front where corruption has seeped into most of the government services and situation is worsening. Also hankering for power for power’s sake, leaving behind ideology and ideals, is on the increase. The challenge that faces the Human Race today is the need to liberate it from the western worldview, which has distorted the concept of Human Progress. Hence we should have National Rebuilding approach that is based on Bharatiya Chintan taking into account our past achievements and problems, our cultural ethos, our aspirations and the present global situation. Need for Philosophy The national philosophy as a guidance is a must for Rebuilding-Nation efforts otherwise we run a risk of personalized ad-hoc approach even for complex long term problems resulting in harming of national interests and failing to channelize energy of a much wider sincere enthusiastic circle of persons, both voluntary and professional, at every level for Rebuilding-Nation efforts. Philosophy in brief Our national philosopy can be aptly described by four potent words Ekatma, Samagra, Dharanaksham and Poornatva. Ekatma really sums up the central principle of unity of existence and all right values and operating principles flow out of this. Samagra refers to integral approach to all situations in personal, family, societal, national and global life. Dharanaksham means giving continuous attention to environment and ecology for sustainable development. Poornatva refers to striving for perfection, attainment of highest good in every aspect and walk of life. This also means all high values are not just to be talked about but have to be realized in action, speech and thought and the whole life has to be exemplary. Important Policy Principles 1 The social goal is to create a society, which would provide the wherewithal for its constituents to reach their highest potential in a harmonious & calibrated way. 2 More emphasis on one’s own duty rather than on rights, sensitive to rights of others. 3 We must adopt “Samyak Vikas” principles 4 Clear national goals must be formulated and publicized 5 Swadeshi 6 Sampoorna Rozgar 7 Development must basically come through Janachetana 8 Decentralization for development 9 Role of government must generally be that of a facilitator 10 Antyodaya (For details see document NEW CENTRAL GOVERNMENT – POLICIES AND TASKS AHEAD prepared by Ekatma Prabodh Mandal)


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RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH (a brief introduction) Rashtriya Matadata Manch (RMM) is ‘a movement for effective democratic process & governance’. RMM monitors and works for effective political and administrative process. The electoral process is an important constituent of the political process. It works by way of creating awareness & empowerment among voters / citizens / common public in a non-partisan way. It is not allied to any political party. RMM wishes to work for addressing the need to arrest the trend of deterioration in political & administrative field and to reverse it so as to restore the basic values of honesty, integrity and accountability in our politics as well as administration. Aim is to build up the pressure of public opinion in favor of an independent, sovereign and clean National government and public governance at all levels appropriate development process ensuring national strength & prosperity along with justice, equitability & empowerment for all our citizens. Important Documents and Studies RMM has prepared a Voters Manifesto, which delineates major points for National Prosperity in tune with the national ethos. RMM has prepared a document setting out desirable electoral reforms that emerged out of recommendations of a Seminar on this topic and subsequent several discussion sessions. RMM has published Performance Review for both the Central as well as State Government when they completed their 5-year term. RMM has also prepared Performance Reviews for the Municipal Corporations of Mumbai and Kalyan – Dombivali. These analyze various aspects of the Municipal Corporation work and also gives quantitative evaluation of the performance. A section outlines desirable things that should happen the next five years. Follow-up with authorities RMM has written over 100 letters to functionaries of Central & State Governments as well as political parties. They not only raise important issues but also try to give alternative suggestions for resolution of the problem. Organizational Work RMM activists regularly meet in a particular area every week and review matters of interest, follow-up of pending matters with authorities and plan for future work. Invitation for action and appeal for support We invite you to join with us in this movement by your active involvement in terms of time, effort and other resources in any way you can. We also solicit suggestion to further the activity.


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RASHTRIYA MATADATA MANCH, (an activity of Ekatma Vikas Samiti, regd public trust no. 858/2013GBBSD) 13, Bldg.2, Samrat, Krishna Chandra Marg, Bandra Reclamation, Bandra West, Mumbai 400050. Tel: 25639654, 9819093008, 9869008409. email: [email protected],

Sister organizations: Ekatma Prabodh Mandal, Urja Prabodhan Kendra, Mumbai Vikas Samiti


evaluation report of upa 2 govt 2009 - 2014 by r.m.m

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