Beleaguered Singh govt enters year three

India?s United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh starts the third year of its second term on Sunday, disadvantaged by a series of corruption scandals, price rise and ministerial gaffes, while a purple patch clearly emerged from some high-profile diplomacy.

The 78-year-old Prime Minister spent much of last year, arguably his most difficult one since he came to power first in 2004, losing face over one scandal in his government after the other, which saw his squeaky-clean image taking a serious hit in the eyes of the Indian public.

The Congress-led centre-left coalition in New Delhi, struck by several corruption scandals, the biggest of which even sees a former minister languishing in jail, set an unprecedented example this year by bowing to protests by activists to set up a joint panel to make a tough anti-graft law.

For the UPA, the year began with the bad omen of an air crash in which at least 158 people were killed after an Air India Express plane met with the tragedy while landing at south India’s Mangalore airport on May 22 raising air safety concerns. The year only went on to be stormier.

The year that followed saw the unearthing of mother of all scams since India’s independence. The 2G spectrum scandal, in which the then telecom minister Andimuthu Raja allegedly gave away mobile airwaves at throwaway prices in lieu of kickbacks, grabbed the most headlines.

The 2G scam exploded after a report by the government?s auditor pegged the estimated loss from the ?illogical? sale of spectrum in 2008, at seven-year-old prices, at Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

Raja, who resigned, was soon taken into custody and currently languishes in the infamous Tihar Jail where he was joined by purported co-conspirators including top execs from telecoms companies and the daughter of Congress? ally DMK party chief Kanimozhi.

The swindle, which is still being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), saw the Winter session of the Parliament being jammed for days resulting in almost no work by an uncharacteristically unified Opposition demanding an additional joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe to which the UPA had to yield.

The aftershocks from the 2G scam, where shocking lapses of government machinery kept being pulled up investigating agencies and courts, was also compounded by the Commonwealth Games scandal.

Supposed to be one of the most celebrated events of 2010 which would mark the coming of age of India, the October 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games, instead saw the country being humiliated by shoddy preparations that included overflowing toilets and falling bridges.

While the chief organiser of the Games? and ex-Congress member Suresh Kalmadi took the biggest blow as he was booed at the opening ceremony, sacked, arrested and even attacked with a sandal on way to court, probe agencies are still trying to trace back the elaborate trail.

Another scam which made headlines was the Adarsh scam, revealed by RTI activists in Maharashtra, exposing how the towering Adarsh Society highrise built for Kargil War widows and their families was illegally occupied by army top brass, bureaucrats and kins of politicians.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan lost his job over the building that was constructed, flouting green norms, in the posh Colaba locality of Mumbai, which is considered a sensitive coastal area by the Indian Defence forces and houses various Indian defence establishments.

The year saw a spree of resignations in the government. Beginning with the erudite Shashi Tharoor, a whirlpool of controversies also sucked Congress? Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and Chief Vigilance Commissioner P J Thomas, besides the scam-accused Raja and Kalmadi.

The P J Thomas affair came as a personal setback to Singh. It was found that Thomas, a man facing graft allegations himself, was somehow given the post of the country?s top corruption watchdog, brushing aside objections raised by Opposition leaders. Eventually, he resigned.

The cluster of corruption scandals prompted a group of activists led by 73-year-old Gandhian Anna Hazare to organise a nationwide hunger strike this April that drew unprecedented support and forced the UPA government to set up a joint panel of activists and ministers to draft a tough ombudsman law – the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Elections brought little respite for the Congress-led UPA. The year that began with a poor faring in Bihar elections and Gujarat panchayat polls, ended with a resounding defeat in Tamil Nadu, the home state of 2G-scam-embroiled member party DMK.

But Bengal and Assam brought good news. While in Bengal the Congress-Trinamool Congress combine raked in a huge three-fourth majority, ousting the 34-year-old Left rule, in Assam Congress party returned to power for the third consecutive time.

On diplomacy front, India?s image shined. Top world leaders including Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, Wen Jiabao came calling on New Delhi, signing deals, patting the government and pushing India closer to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

This was widely seen as a visible acknowledgement of India?s growing regional and global profile. At the Toronto and Seoul G-20 Summits, Prime Minister Singh deliberated with fellow leaders, on steadying the global financial ship, which had barely emerged from turbulent waters.

But on the home economy front, robust growth figures were met squarely by an equally firm inflation rate which touched 7.48 percent based on the wholesale price index in November. Opposition parties repeatedly rapped the ruling government for failing to tackle spiralling prices.

Even the UPA?s decision to deregulate petrol prices last June, that was welcomed by economists, brought more woes for the Congress mascot ?common man? as it saw oil rates being increased nine times in the last nine months, putting pressure on an economy already beset by unsettling inflation figures.

Though the 2G scam comprehensively shadowed the front page of the telecoms industry, the 3G and BWA spectrum auctions saw a successful bidding war that raked in about 1.02 lakh crore for the UPA government.

The year saw the Indian job market rev back to life. About 11.3 lakh jobs were added in the organised sector in 2010, the best figure in four years, according to a survey.

Another one said that India actually beats China to be the be top destination in the world for prospects of job creation in the first quarter of 2011 — a trend affirmed by a pick in campus placements.

But the second year of the UPA II government ended on a low note as the Home Ministry, headed by one of its most respected ministers P Chidambaram faced incompetence allegations when several gaffes were spotted on fugitive lists that it handed out to Pakistan for searching within its own borders.

Chidambaram admitted the lapses, calling them ?normal human error?, but the livid Opposition slammed the government for trivialising the fight against terror and offering Pakistan a weapon to deny India’s contention on terrorists hiding in that country.

Also with the arrest of Kanimozhi, the daughter of DMK-chief M Karunanidhi, rumours of a possible break-up between the Congress and the the south Indian party were doing rounds, which if realised could weaken the government at the Centre.

So as Manmohan Singh starts the first week of the third year of his second term by boarding a flight on Monday to Africa for a six-day visit, few expect him, a man hailed in the past as one India’s best Prime Ministers, to be in an exultant mood.