The Hindu : BJP unhappy with Sinha's handling of economy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 23, 2002

National

National

BJP unhappy with Sinha's handling of economy

By Alok Mukherjee

NEW DELHI JUNE 22. With a reshuffle of the Union Cabinet in the offing, a section of the BJP leadership is gunning for the Union Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha. This section holds the perception that Mr. Sinha's handling of the domestic economy has alienated a large section of the party's vote bank.

According to some party insiders, a simplistic analysis of the series of rout that the BJP faced in the recent elections has brought about the conclusion that the party has not been able to catch the fancy of the voters despite its strong Hindutva accent because some of the economic policy decisions under the party rule have directly impinged on the voter's welfare.

Party insiders point out that the BJP's sway in the rural areas is nothing to match those of the regional parties which promote sectional interests.

Neither is its appeal among the working classes anywhere near those of the Left parties. Consequently, the BJP has had to concentrate and seek its vote share from the urban and semi-urban middle class and it is the disenchantment of this segment that is costing the party heavily in terms of electoral victories.

Articulating the grievances of the middle class, these sources say that on top of the declining returns on savings and investments, the series of scams that have hit some of the top financial institutions have undermined the faith of the investors in the ability of the Government to take preventive steps.

In the case of the Unit Trust of India, not only have the small investors taken a big knock on their investments, the promised returns are not materialising in most cases.

Wherever the Government has stepped in to bail out the UTI, it has done so with the taxpayers money which means that the investor has been short-changed twice.

On the other hand, there is still no clue to who tipped off the big corporates to withdraw their money from the US-64 scheme before the whole thing collapsed, and that too at arbitrarily fixed high prices. Since nobody has been brought to book, the perception has gained ground that the Finance Ministry is soft on the corrupt and the scamsters and insensitive to the concerns of the ordinary investors.

The series of arrests of senior revenue officials on corruption charges has only added to this perception.

"The common voter is not impressed with the other achievements of Mr. Sinha. The low inflation rate or the high foreign exchange reserves are things distant to him; at the same time, taxes have gone up and more and more services are under the tax net. Moreover, jobs have become scarce and it is becoming very difficult to sell the positive points of this Government to the voter who feels that the corrupt and guilty are getting away while those who pay taxes are being increasingly harassed,'' say the party sources.

This perception is running so deep within the BJP that the party had to publicly question its Finance Minister on his budget proposals and make him change some of them.

"This has never happened before. No political party has taken its own Finance Minister to task so openly and forced him to change proposals. The Finance Minister is definitely pushing reforms but, obviously, political finesse is lacking somewhere,'' say Mr. Sinha's detractors.

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