Column : Give him time, read between his lines

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: The fashionable way to run government policy in the UPA II era, it seems, is through dramatic, reform-laden 100-day plans usually announced with much fanfare by glib ministers in the presence of the media corps in their full strength. If some of the grand 100-day plans of individual ministers (and add the ambitious presidential address to that) are used as a benchmark, then Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget speech is bound to disappoint.

But there are more reasons than one not to use grand plans and vision speeches as benchmarks for judging a single Union Budget. The business of government and the business of reform are about much more than announcements—they are about getting things done. And smart talk doesn’t always translate into plausible action. One need look no further than the serious backtracking that Mukherjee’s colleagues, Kapil Sibal and Veerappa Moily, have already had to do after announcing their admittedly desirable and welcome agendas for reform in education and law.

The plain fact is that the political economy of change is very complex in our democratic polity and things move a lot slower than most of us would like. Unlike most of us, however, Pranab Mukherjee is too canny a politician to walk straight into what he knows may develop into a storm of opposition, which would force him into an embarrassing climbdown. From all accounts, there is still considerable opposition from even within the treasury benches to certain key reforms. But make no mistake, Pranab Mukherjee, as he has proved over his long ministerial career, is a doer, and if one reads carefully between the lines of his Budget speech, one can see that he means business, even in the most contentious areas of reform. Consider just three: disinvestment, fuel prices and fertiliser subsidy.