A couple of years back, there was a sustained push in terms of liquidity in the global system, and as a result, the huge amounts of cash were pushing up the prices of all commodities, resulting in food inflation numbers being high. However, the recession for the past 2 years brought down this excess liquidity in the system to some degree, causing a reduction in the inflation numbers through 2008. But, to combat the poor economic condition and to ensure that the recession does not become stronger, Governments the world over had to open their purses and spend huge amounts in order to push weak companies (whose collapse could set off domino effects) to remain afloat. One problem with the spending of such huge amounts of money was that they also pushed in an excess of liquidity in the system, causing too money in the system.
This in turn resulted in an overall increase of prices of commodities, and since the Indian Government has been pushing up the prices that they give to farmers for the different crops, there was a push to food based inflation. The Government may well be arguing that they cannot stop international trends, but there are a number of steps, in terms of better monitoring, quick decisions on importing or procurement, letting more players into the retail business for pushing more efficiencies and reducing waste, and a number of other steps. For example, the productivity levels of Indian farmers is not very high, and yet there is no effort by the Government to push for more education to increase the growth levels per acre.
However, politically the increase in prices hurts the Government, and hurts the party in power (the Congress), and gives the opposition a stick to beat it with. Nobody wants to be associated with the political blame game that happens with an increase in prices, so State Government refuse to accept any part of the blame, even the agriculture minister (Sharad Pawar) would rather that all steps taken so far are actually Cabinet decisions (since he does not want the blame to stick to him), and so on. In such situations, the Government can only make statements such as assuring that the worst is over, and that prices will soon fall. It cannot do something else for the short term.
Sponsors
Feed
Sponsors
-
The tussle in Maharashtra looks like an ongoing Mahabharta war, with the Congress and MNS / Shiv Sena in opposite camps, and the state Congress playing the role of the blind father, who is unable to do any kind of justice. It has been apparent for some time that the MNS is playing the role of the savior of local customs and jobs with great show and display, including beating up migrants from northern states, and so on. Since the subject of Marathi pride, Marathi culture, and Marathi jobs is a pet subject of the Shiv Sena, it too jumped into the campaign. At this, the first major rupture in the current round of politics happened.
The RSS considers the Shiv Sena as a fellow brother in the struggle for Hindutva, but on this issue, a touchy point got hit. The RSS considers the whole of India as one, and to proclaim that a particular city or state is meant more for one community is a prickly issue to the RSS, and the RSS chief jumped into the debate. The BJP was forced to follow suit, and jump into the same debate. This in turn got the Shiv Sena to get all touchy, proclaiming that the RSS had no idea of what was involved, and asking them not to interfere.
The Congress typically watches such issues from the side, since it is a national party and cannot afford to be identifying with the Maharashtra for Marathis sentiment; and yet cannot take the logical step of bringing in the required police action to stop the MNS goons. It wants the MNS to keep on splitting the Shiv Sena vote, but the Chief Minister and other leaders were forced to take a side when Rahul Gandhi also jumped into the debate, criticizing both the MNS and the Shiv Sena, and other Congress leaders had to make the required public statements in support. Yet, for the last few hours, all they had to do was to take the required constitutional steps of maintaining law and order, and this would have automatically shut the speeches of the MNS.
Well, it finally happened. Some days after it became clear that relations between the strongman of the SP, Mulayam Singh, and his man friday, Amar Singh, were not okay, they started sniping at each other; Mulayam not directly, but through various party people, including his own brother; and Amar Singh directly. The confrontation was apparently over the position that Amar Singh had in the party, he would always have expected to be the number 2 in the party, but the family relations for Mulayam would have meant that he would have been more comfortable with his son and brother having leading positions in the party. Further, since the SP has been out of power for so long, the charm of some sort of power has also lost, and it is true that parties out of power tend to start splitting sooner. In addition, it could be very much possible that the fight between them could also be because of sharing of commercial interests.
However, after some time, the resignation of Amar Singh from the various party posts was accepted, and in a sign that the separation was final and complete, these posts were given to other people. And then it happened, soon after Amar Singh made some threatening noises about spilling secrets of his ‘netaji’ (Mulayam), he was expelled from the party along with Jaya Prada. Now, it seems that the Samajwadi Party is trying to get their Parliament seats unseated by quoting some earlier verdict.