The next couple of weeks will see an inundation of media commentary and debate on the first year performance of the United Progressive Alliance government. There will be a predictable mix of harsh judgments and charitable views.
The former will be based on the premise that, even though this government has been in office only for a year, it comprises people with long experience, who know how the system works and how to get things done.
It, therefore, should have hit the ground running. Instead, its energies were dissipated by endless wrangling, both, with its coalition partners and the opposition, which stymied its executive and legislative agendas.
The latter will suggest that one year is a very short time in Indian politics, even for people who have been there before. One should not have expected to see any tangible achievements anyway.
The real question is whether the year has been spent consolidating forces and generating momentum, which will see the critical components of its programme falling into place over the next couple of years.
At the core of this debate is the fundamental question of how the functioning of this government is going to impact on economic performance.
What do we see at the end of the first year that will allow us to make a positive or negative assessment on that score? From this perspective, there are, clearly, factors visible on both sides. It is useful to classify them over two different dimensions.
The first is the 'control' dimension. There are several factors that will impact the medium-term performance of the economy, over which the government has no control.
In relation to these, its performance has to be judged in terms of its ability to anticipate their dynamics and put in place mechanisms that either protect the economy against their threats or create the capacity to exploit opportunities.
There is little question that the most significant threat to sustained economic growth that has emerged over the last year is the global oil scenario. Whatever its origins, it is by now clear that the next few years will see a far more hostile price scenario than the one that prevailed for more than a decade.
During this period, India's energy intensity can only increase. Since we cannot control oil prices, the next best thing is to minimise our dependence on it.
This government has certainly shown significant initiative in both locking in oil supplies through outward foreign investment and, more importantly, exploiting the opportunity provided by natural gas in the region. Energy will be available, even if it is expensive.
Yet, the most important defence against oil prices is conservation. More energy-efficient equipment, smaller vehicles for private use and adequate public transport systems are all key contributors to this.
The best inducement to conservation is high prices. Letting the prices of petroleum products reflect the cost of crude is critical to any conservation strategy.
Concerns over the short-term impact on quality of life are, of course, entirely legitimate. But, if one accepts that high crude prices are here to stay, the sooner prices reflect this reality, the faster the system will adjust to it.
Similarly, there may be a case for penalising larger vehicles with an additional tax and imposing a fuel economy standard on automobile manufacturers.
And, reviving urban public transport systems must be given top priority; excuses about jurisdiction and so on simply cannot come in the way of what clearly is a national problem.
On the opportunities side of this dimension, the most important one is the elimination of textile quotas. A decade has gone by without any government seriously addressing the distortions that will prevent us from taking full advantage of this.
Therefore, to place the burden of responsibility on the UPA government's shoulders would be unfair. However, when we look back on its record four years from now, its inability or unwillingness to act now will be grounds for a damning indictment.
The constraint imposed by small-scale reservation was addressed to a large extent in the budget process.
However, a critical constraint to large-scale production remains in the labour laws. However guarded and limited in scope, unless some meaningful change takes place on this front, the opportunity will be lost.
The second dimension is what I would call "action". Of the things within its control, what did it do and not do? On this score, clearly the most significant achievement was the implementation of VAT (value-added tax).
Notwithstanding the hiccups of implementation, even the risks of short-term revenue losses, VAT provides the best hope for both expanding the tax base and making compliance self-regulatory.
More so, in keeping the ruling coalition flock amongst the state governments in control, the UPA government took the political high ground away from the National Democratic Alliance, whose constituent state governments refused to implement VAT.
As the benefits of VAT become obvious to the states that have implemented it, the pressure to bring it in elsewhere will mount, creating the base for a fully integrated system with offsets on inter-state transactions. This will be an enduring legacy of the UPA government.
The biggest failure on this dimension has been in the power sector. Unfortunately, at the end of the government's first year we are no closer to a meaningful solution than we were when it came into office.
As in the case of VAT, the solution lies in actions by the states rather than the Centre. Perhaps, a VAT-like approach, using an empowered committee of state ministers supported by assurances and concrete protections from the Centre, would provide a solution.
But, wherever the solution lies, it must be found very, very quickly. There is no way the current buoyancy in the economy, particularly in the industrial sector, is going to persist without substantial increases in power availability.
On balance, from an economic perspective, this has clearly not been a fruitless first year for the UPA government. There are some tangible achievements, which, of course, need to be reinforced and fine-tuned so that their full benefits can be realised.
On other issues, political compulsions have come in the way of solutions that, to many of us, are obvious and necessary.
A reasonable and fair assessment of year one would be that the achievements need to be recognised but the capacity to address fundamental constraints with enduring solutions has not been fully demonstrated. Clearly a "pass" at the end of this year, but the criteria for evaluation will keep getting more and more stringent as the months pass by.
The author is chief economist, Crisil. The views here are personal.
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