Allies

Tussle between the Congress and Mamta Banerjee – what next ?

It all seems so sudden. The increase in tension between these allies (and they have been allied for a very long time now in some way or the other) is very sudden, and confusing to a number of political observers. After all, it was a match made in heaven. The mercurial state leader, Mamta Banerjee, who was in the Congress many years previously, has always had a prime mission to remove the Communist Parties from their tight grip on West Bengal politics, the same target as the Congress, but much more focused. In the past few years, it became clear that Mamta Banerjee was going to be the main driver of the movement to oust the Left from the Writer’s Building in Kolkata, and as a result, the Congress was always going to be playing second fiddle.
Now the way that the Congress is used to its allies is that the Congress lets them take the lead in the states (or rather, the allies make it clear that since almost all of them are state level parties, they take the lead in the state), and then the Congress depends on them for support in the Central Government, and the allies really don’t rock the boat too much. Parties such as the DMK, the RJD, the NCP, or other state allies have always worked on this formula. They do not rock the Congress at the national level or cause any amount of embarrassment.
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The Government backs down on FDI – a flawed approach

The Congress has done it again. For many months now, the Government has been publicly criticized for not taking any initiatives, for causing a paralysis that is slowing the process for reform in the country and combined with the harsh interest rates being set by the RBI (in order to try and fight inflation, without taking any measures on the supply side front), slowly bringing the rate of growth in the economy down. Recent reports speak of reduction in growth rates of industrial production, along with an outflow of money as major Indian businesses invest abroad in light of a reduced level of confidence in the Indian economy. This is combined with a higher level of revenue and decreased tax receipts which are causing Pranab Mukherjee to increase deficit levels and run out of money for the various welfare schemes that the Congress believes is necessary for its survival.
No Government can continue like this for very long, and when combined with the reduced public confidence following the agitation over the Lokpal Bill, the Government has to show it is dedicated to growth; and for this, some steps of reform are needed to be advocated. So, the Government decided to show that it is focused on reform and not stuck on any paralysis, and thus came the Cabinet decision to allow FDI in multi-brand retail to 51%, effectively allowing the major international retailers to come into the country. This is a decision that has been contested for a long time, since the fear of letting large retailers such as Walmart into the country is that they will be so powerful that they will put the local retailers out of business, and there are a large number of retailers and people dependent on them, which in turn means that there is a political cost.
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Mayawati’s gambit – division of Uttar Pradesh into 4 parts ..

Uttar Pradesh is one of the biggest states in India, with the state having a huge population (it can be counted as the fifth or sixth largest countries in the world in terms of population). With this size, Uttar Pradesh has always had problems in terms of development, being ritually included in the list of least developed states of India. Of course, the fact that the past political leadership of the state have not exactly covered themselves with glory in terms of development efforts, preventing the increased amount of criminal activities or other such efforts to promote an agenda in which the people of the state would develop. After all, if you include Kalyan Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, or Mayawati, none of these really ended up in making significant efforts to develop the state.
With such a large state, you would expect that there would be a number of people talking about how to break up the state into multiple regions (states) so that you get a smaller state with the increased possibility of more focus on development. Now, this may not be necessarily true, since the newer states such as Jharkand, Chattisgarh or Uttarakhand have not suddenly spurted ahead in terms of development, but the states have become more agile, and have shown an increased amount of development as compared to the states from which they were divided.
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