A nation-wide strike in India has highlighted the difficultiesin pushing through reforms in an era of fractious coalition politics despitethe clamour for decisive action from leaders.
The opposition as well as the ruling Congress coalition›sbiggest ally, the regional Trinamool Congress, have denounced the government›splans for a blitz of market-opening measures as a crushing attack on the poor.
The firestorm marks the latest political battle faced by thegovernment since it was elected in 2004, with even minor policy changes such ashiking fares on the country›s dilapidated rail system becoming major points ofcontention.
“India is a populous country with populist slogans “ people fallfor populist slogans. It is easy for politicians to say reforms are anti-poor,”political analyst Subhash Agrawal, head of think-tank India Focus, told AFP.
Singh used to be hailed as India’s “economic liberator” forigniting the fuse for faster growth by embracing freer markets when he was financeminister in 1991 and the economy was in the midst of crisis.
But his stint as prime minister has disappointed investorswho had hoped for a second generation of liberalisation steps -- somethinglargely absent until last week when his government announced a slew of changes.
Analysts say Singh and more importantly his boss, Congress’spro-poor party president Sonia Gandhi, appeared to have been convinced such stepswere necessary to improve the country’s bleak economic outlook, analysts say.
India’s deteriorating growth, ballooning fiscal deficitalong with the threat of losing its investment grade status “all played a rolein forcing the hand of authorities,” said Credit Suisse economist Robert Prior-Wandesforde.
“It’s a shame that the government waited so long to take action,but, as is oft en the case in India, it requires near crisis conditions beforeanything is done,” he said.
“We have a sea of populist, totally opportunist parties,”B.G. Verghese of India’s Centre for Policy Research, a policy thinktank, toldAFP.
India has been subject to the vagaries of coalition politicsand increasingly influential regional parties since 1996, with Congress losingits ability to win a majority in the parliament like it did in the 1980s.
Nearly a third of India’s 29 states now are run by regionalparties while Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party govern therest of the fractured political landscape.
