Let's take a look at all the issues starting from UPA-I itself. Kashmir has been an important issue for any government at the centre. The Vajpayee government had actually turned around the situation significantly through free and fair elections (certainly with the help of Election Commission) and an improved political climate (through the outcome and the then PDP govt.), and the UPA could have just built over it. Yet, the only march the UPA has made, in its two avatars, with regard to Kashmir, has been towards disaster. The progress on the peace talks with Pakistan slowed down; so did discussions with separatists in Kashmir. When Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik were ready to engage with India, our UPA govt. was only interested in sleeping over, hoping that its problems would go away. The end results were quite disastrous. Congress forced PDP to give chief ministership to itself, did massive turnarounds on the Amarnath land issue, and at the end, ensured that the valley has burnt every summer for the past 3 years. And chances are that in 2011, again the valley may simmer over some issue, thanks to no progress made on the Kashmir front. And when its own army men and police may be crying for a political solution, the UPA may just be found lacking again in political judgement to solve the problem.
Let's go straight then to the second problem: Bihar. In February 2005, when Bihar elections gave a hung assembly, it was required for the Congress to arrive at an agreement between Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan. This was a moment when the Congress could have taken a lead in resolving issues between the two leaders rather than allowing the Opposition to get away with the state. But what did the Congress do? Nothing. It just slept over the matter. Later in October 2005, elections were won over by Nitish-BJP alliance. The end result is that Congress has wiped itself out (along with Lalu of course) in Bihar. And its hopes of Nitish crossing over at some stage to it may also dash, since Nitish would have realized by now how opportune the Congress is, considering the latter's treatment to DMK and Lalu.
The lack of political judgement could be seen in a comparison over what is important electorally and what is not. To do so, let's look at two things: the Indo-US nuclear deal and Right to Food. It's the comparison between these things which tell us what exactly is lacking.
When UPA astonishingly came to power (yes it was astonishing for most of us including myself), I had been against Sonia Gandhi being made the PM, but for a reason different to what most people thought (her foreign origin). My concerns were with the agenda or the ideas she would have as PM. I have always felt that a PM should be clear about what his/her goals are, what he/she is trying to achieve and accordingly set a time frame of when hopefully can these be achieved. For this a lot of things are required, be it understanding of Indian bureaucracy, historical performance of various indicators of development, or even understanding policy framework and its impact on Indians at large. Sonia never explained her own stand in terms of what she believed in, on even one single area, be it industry, agriculture, defense or anything else. And when she never did so, I doubted why should she be made the PM of this country.
When Manmohan was made the PM, I felt this may lead to a further disaster. And that could now be clearly seen. Manmohan, who has never even won a Lok Sabha election, could never have the sense of political judgement to solve issues. And that has been seen regularly each and every time. He has the time to talk about fiscal reforms, not having learnt the fact that govts. which talked about fiscal reforms (Narasimha Rao, S.M. Krishna and Chandrababu Naidu) face a disaster at the hustings. Nor does he have the time to meet even the common people, and this for a government which supposedly represents the 'aam aadmi'. The big failure has been his stand on the issues I mentioned above: the nuclear deal and the Right to Food (RTF) law.
One of the factors which people believe got the UPA back in power was the MGNREGA, a social rights-based program. By this logic, it would have made good sense electorally for the UPA to introduce Right to Food law at the earliest and win more votes. Moreover, in states where the Opposition parties were in power, non-implementation or badly implemented RTF would have quite easily helped Congress in coming back to power on account of ensuring a well functioning RTF. If cheaper rice could lead to BJP coming back to power in Chhattisgarh in 2008, there was no reason why a RTF could not do the same for Congress in power when elections were around in 2014. Instead, the PM is bothered only about fiscal deficits and listening to Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Perhaps this is because the PM is not affected electorally, for an electorally elected PM would have realized the immense importance of such a law. The result is that while the Congress continues to make noises about the aam aadmi, it has done virtually nothing to ensure passage of an act which could benefit the aam aadmi in a way no other law may have done.
Manmohan Singh was however seen to fight for another law which he calls as 'game changer', but which brings nothing on the electoral table: the nuclear deal. One would wonder what was the need to endanger a government on an issue which could not even fetch 100 votes at the Panchayat level in even Gujarat (where crackers were burst on the passage of the deal). Infact, Manmohan wanted to prove he was not a weak PM through such an initiative! The ideal thing would have been to take Advani on and bring a Right to Food law himself as a MP. But then, the former was done very late, and the latter he can't even think of and bring.
The political judgement seems to be lacking in other areas as well. Be it tackling price rise, Telangana, Gorkhaland or Naxalism, the government seems to be completely lacking any political ideas or sense of political judgement to tackle the problem. One day, Mr. Chidambaram announces Telangana, only to withdraw it the very next day. On one hand, he calls for talks with Naxals, and on the other, says Naxals won't talk and hence he has to pursue his operations. How come Naxals' view point was known without giving them an offer of talks? And who could think of raising petrol and diesel prices when it was known that it will lead to further inflation and resentment against the Congress and the Central Government? Not to forget of course, the scams and the muck created by the very same group.
All of this makes one realize that the UPA and in particular the Congress has lost the sense of political judgement. All it can think of is opposing or supporting for the sake of it, without any critique or any reasoning of why it did or why it does so. The only sector which does well in India is the economy and that is because it doesn't function necessarily on the sense of political judgement (or lack of it) in our country. It is as if this government is following in Narasimha Rao's foodsteps ('Inaction is also an action'), except that while Mr. Rao didn't follow this philosophy with regard to survival of his govt. and himself, the Congress is ready to follow it even with respect to itself and its own survival. So much so that ministers keep shouting and expressing their divergent views while nobody does anything. It's as if ministers are actually belonging to opposition parties rather than being a part of the government!
Of course, the Congress may still win the 2014 elections, considering that the BJP and the Left lack political judgement too, but for the country and its citizens, the coming days could be extremely troublesome.
