Congressmen nervous about elections should concede that if they do badly, reforms can?t be blamed. They haven?t done any reform. Indeed, in every government since Rajiv Gandhi?s, which had started what can be called proto-reforms, the zeal to change has had a short shelf life. Usually, adverse assembly election results killed the urge for change. In 1987, the Congress lost Haryana, a bit of a shock for the party that decided Rajiv?s small reductions in import duties were to blame. In 1994, Narasimha Rao?s Congress lost Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Rao told his finance minister, then a bold reformer and now the Prime Minister, to go easy on reforms. In 2002, Atal Behari Vajpayee?s BJP lost Punjab, UP and Uttaranchal, plus the high- profile Delhi municipal polls. What was blamed? Reforms, of course. Yashwant Sinha?s budgets were rather unfairly, as well as undeservedly, labeled too market-friendly. By 2003, disnvestment had stopped and Vajpayee went to polls without having effected any major reform in the later part of his government. But the urban myth about the BJP maniacally reforming and losing votes sprung up any way because the party had coined the slogan ?India Shining?.
The UPA is remarkable in that it more or less gave up on reforms very early in its term. Indeed, and thanks to the Left?s obvious hold on the government, the UPA successfully created an environment of low expectations about policy change. The only exception was handing over Delhi and Mumbai airports to the private sector. But even that reform is sabotaged now. Chennai and Kolkata airports are being ?reformed? by Airports Authority of India. Instead of carping about lack of reform, there is relief that there has been no major reversal of previous changes and Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram have been justly given credit for it. But, of course, if the Congress sits in the opposition after the next election, plenty of people inside and outside the party will still blame reforms. No one will admit the simplest rule about general elections: all incumbents have lost since 1977, when the Congress first lost power, in the absence of a political wave. The Congress came back in 1984 after Indira Gandhi?s assassination and the BJP came back in 1999 after the Kargil conflict. All others have lost.