I cannot quite recall how long it took to hold the several rounds of elections in 1999 or in 1998. Maybe as long as it has in 2004, maybe not. But this time round it does seem to have been an eternity. A boon for sure for the pollsters and the news channel no doubt, but unpleasant for many others, particularly those who see the issue as the header suggests. A choice between powering straight ahead or taking a diversion, the only thing about which is certain is that it will prove costly for the economy. Some will see this as another expression of the incorrigible homo economicus. For one thing, this is a business paper. But more important, while it is true that man does not live by bread alone, it is certainly critical when he is under-nourished. This is a poor country and most people just get by, more than fifty years after Independence, and decades after our equally poor neighbours in South East and East Asia have raced ahead of us, in some cases by miles. This is simply unacceptable.

Not unacceptable because they have raced ahead of us, but because we have lagged. That?s obvious you might say. Not so, unfortunately. Over the years I have heard endless explanations why each and every one of the economic success stories in Asia were some kind of exception, not an example worth studying and emulating. It is to the eternal credit of Mr Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh that they dragged India, often kicking and screaming, into the world of openness, competition and opportunity. A fresh breeze cleared this house of the cobwebs and mouldy air of habit and antiquated ideas. As the dividends of the complete break in economic policy and in its institutions began to pour in after 1993, and as the elections of 1996 approached, do you remember what the conventional wisdom (CW) was? That everyone (but for the Marxists) were now converts to economic reforms and the course of the economy would be mostly unaffected by the outcome of the polls.

We soon found out that the CW was wrong. We had a hung Parliament and two successive short-lived governments supported by the Congress party from outside. It was not as if there were no competent people in that government or no champions of economic reform. But they mostly found their path obstructed from the front and unbearable pressure from the back to move in disastrous directions. Like the Fifth Pay Commission and its bizarre implementation that has set back public finances by more than a decade and thus denied the creation of social infrastructure assets ? schools, drinking water and roads ? that our people deserve. Why did this happen, for members of those governments were surely honourable men? It happened mostly because of the iron law of short-time horizons. Why after all do democracies elect a government for a term of four or five years, and not one of one year? Would not more frequent elections make for more democracy?

It does not work that way. In order to be able to do anything substantial, it takes time to see the ideas through; time for good policies to bear fruit. If people come into office, knowing that they have a five-year term ahead of them, they?ll work to what that term permits. If they enter office, reasonably certain that it would be a short-lived affair, being rational beings they will indeed work to that shorter time frame. Quick fixes that reward their immediate constituents become appealing; anything that?ll take a long tie looks uninteresting. Incongruity in ideas amongst participants just makes things worse.

So in 1998 when we went in for elections once again, expectations were low; the CW was that it couldn?t get more directionless, could it? The upside possibilities outweighed the downside ones. The Congress had a chance of winning the elections, which surely was an upside after what had gone before. The same applied to the BJP-led alliance. The first year of the NDA government was not a shining one: The first UTI crisis, onion prices, the pasting in four state elections, and more interventionist economic policy. They were eventually offset by the inability of the Opposition to form a government after pulling the NDA one down and Mr Musharraf?s adventures in Kargil was the coup de grace. So in September 1999, the CW was again seeing an upside either way, possibly the biggest one being that the experiments of 1996-98 was not going to be repeated.

May 2004 in that sense is fundamentally different. Over the past few years, the NDA government?s economic policies have evolved and very much for the better. The corporate manufacturing sector has matured in a way that is simply unbelievable. The banking system is much stronger even when judged by the current standards that are far more exacting than they were six years ago. New business areas in IT and BPO are booming and providing good jobs to hundreds of thousands of young people out of high school and college. Literacy standards have improved and the youngsters entering the job market are fundamentally better equipped to make use of tangible and intangible capital assets. We can clearly see where continuity in government can take this economy. If we take 2004 as the beginning of a new journey, the initial conditions have never been so good. That?s the road straight ahead.

It would have been truly wonderful if the contenders for government seemed capable of taking the same course. Unfortunately that does not seem to be the case. In the Congress party the veterans of the 1980s seem to be in ascendancy, those who gave us our economic reforms less so. Their prospective partners have absolutely nothing in common with it, but opposition to the BJP and a desire to share in power. ?The enemy of my enemy is my friend? may be a workable axiom in international diplomacy, for you cannot change the nature of other nations. But it is a poor foundation on which to form a government that holds in its hands the keys to domestic policy.

The Indian electorate will decide what it will. If it chooses to go down the diversion, so it shall be. Eventually it will get back onto the highway, but this time round it will be an inestim-ably costly diversion, the waste of a great opportunity.

The author is economic advisor to ICRA (Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency)