Union finance minister P. Chidambaram has promised a slew of decisions on coal pricing, gas allocation, FDI, etc., at the end of June and more in July, and that some targets for the fiscal would be met by August. All this is a move to create a friendly environment to attract foreign investment. However, Mr Chidambaram seems to be fighting a robust battle on several fronts without much tangible effect on the ground. The Cabinet Committee on Investment, in existence since November 2012, is supposed to have cleared a host of projects earlier this year, but there is no sign of any of them taking off. Instead, the FM said the Prime Minister has now set up a cell in the Cabinet Secretariat to track 30-40 large projects stuck due to approval issues and that these could be cleared by July.
It would be better if this multitude of monitoring cells and committees are made accountable as there seems to be a lot of duplication and no accountability. There was also the startling revelation by oil and gas minister M. Veerappa Moily that bureaucrats have been sitting on decisions for one to three years, holding up investment in oil and gas exploration. One hopes Mr Chidambaram will look into this aspect and find out whether part of the policy paralysis the Manmohan Singh government is accused of is due to sabotage of the decision-making process by the bureaucracy. Mr Moily has said his accusations are being made with full responsibility.