UPA is sinking under the weight of its contradictions

The Prime Minister tells newspersons in the US that “Chidambaram enjoyed my full confidence as finance minister and continues to enjoy and inspire my full confidence as home minister.”

The home minister, recently the target of a finance ministry note that said he could have stopped A Raja’s sale of underpriced spectrum (“the 2G scam”) if he wanted, has told the PM that he will hold his fire till he returns from the US, according to the Hindustan Times .

The finance minister has told US CEOs that the government will rediscover its reformist agenda in the winter session of parliament, when several bills will be introduced and passed.

What’s interesting about these statements is that none of the people concerned holds real power in the UPA dispensation.

The PM’s confidence in Chidambaram is not relevant when his fate will be decided by Sonia Gandhi.

Chidambaram holding his fire does not matter when it is the courts that will decide whether he colluded with Raja in the spectrum scam or not.

Pranab Mukherjee cannot guarantee the passing of any of his reformist bills. Only Sonia Gandhi can ensure that by pulling in her allies in the coalition.

The destruction of the UPA’s credibility over the last year has exposed the contradictions in the power structure adopted by Sonia Gandhi for the last seven years, and till these are resolved, the UPA cannot perform despite a huge mandate in 2009.

Contradiction No 1: The division of power between PM and party president simply cannot endure. The relationship between Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi has been reduced to one between a bureaucrat and his minister, with Sonia being the minister who has to take the decisions and Manmohan giving her the options.

But Sonia has not been taking key political decisions, and so Manmohan Singh is busy shuffling his papers and waiting for a green signal. In our parliamentary democracy, there is no option but to invest the prime minister with the political authority to govern. Else he will fail – as Manmohan Singh has.

Contradiction No 2: An unbalanced coalition where one or two state powers call the shots. In the current coalition, three regional parties – the Trinamool Congress, the DMK and the NCP – are laws unto themselves. This is the central factor that allowed a Raja to continue with his scam with impunity. He knew his party boss would tell Sonia Gandhi to back off – and this is what tied the hands of the PM and Chidambaram.

If Raja can run his own telecom policy, if Mamata Banerjee can veto a land bill, if Sharad Pawar can sit on an agriculture portfolio and do nothing when the Congress wants to create food security, they will only end up neutralising one another.

The 2G scam and the failure against inflation is thus the failure of Sonia Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh or Chidambaram or Pranab Mukherjee.

Contradiction No 3: You can’t run a presidential system in a parliamentary democracy. The prime minister of India has to be elected by the people, not nominated by the party president. He has to lead the house, not the bureaucracy. His cabinet cannot be overshadowed by Sonia Gandhi’s super cabinet of the National Advisory Council. Is it any surprise that Manmohan Singh has no moral authority left in the UPA?

Contradiction No 4: Politics cannot be divorced from economics. Thanks to its internal contradictions, decision-making in the UPA is divorced from reality. In a political economy political decisions cannot be hermetically sealed from economic consequences  and vice versa. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul cannot dictate the political imperatives and a costly social agenda and expect Manmohan Singh to somehow manage the economics of it all and pick up the bills. The political decisions shoved down his throat are partially responsible for the current raging inflation and economic slowdown.

Till the contradictions are resolved, the UPA will continue to stumble from crisis to crisis. UPA-1 got lucky because the economy was on autopilot and the global surge of money lifted all boats, including ours.

But now, the situation is exactly the reverse. The tide of growth is ebbing, and rescuing our boat needs a convergence of political and economic decisions.

The next few months will decide whether the UPA will implode under the its contradications or learn to swim better.