Allies

A quick rollback of the Railway Budget – new minister Mukul Roy will toe Mamta’s line

This has been a very surprising and strange week in Indian politics. In today’s world, with coalition politics, you can see the pressure that the Prime Minister faces, and the PM has mentioned this a number of times already – with statements to the effect that the pressure of coalition politics puts pressure against taking hard decisions. Consider the current situation – the Congress party has had to back-pedal on many laws / policies that it believes is for the public good (or will project the Congress as a party of reform). Examples abound such as the Lokpal Bill, the National Counter Terrorism Center, FDI in retail, Pension Bill, etc. In many cases, the Congress has got support from the BJP for many reform oriented proposals, but the partners of the Congress would not allow these bills to be enacted (consider the case of the proposed Pension law, or some other reform laws).
It is now becoming clear that the Congress Government is reconciled with the fact that there will be only very gradual changes that it can make, with only populist measures being such that they will get support. You only have to see the case of the current Railway Budget. For many years now, the Railways has been seen to be a resource drain on the general budget, not able to generate revenue of its own (and even the acclaimed time of Laloo Prasad Yadav when the Railways was seen to have a surplus is derided as creative accounting); conditions in the Railways are pretty bad. Mamta Banerjee was the last minister who was presenting the Railway Budget, and she seemed to consider this as the Railway Budget for Bengal rather than for the country. The current situation was that the Railways has a pretty bad reputation in terms of the number of accidents that happen and where people die, where the condition of facilities at the train stations and in the trains is pretty bad, where the website of the Railways can be slow or non-working for days and nobody really seems to care, and so on. Food in even the prestigious Shatabdi is pretty bad, with days when the food is good being counted as a bonus.
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The Uttar Pradesh election results – against the Congress

The election results of Uttar Pradesh on the 6th of March were a surprise to everyone, to the pollsters, and to the political parties as well. For quite some time now, the Congress has the hope that they will be able to improve their tally in this state, the state that has the largest number of seats in terms of state assembly and in terms of Parliament. Towards this end, the young and bright hope of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, has given it a lot of attention in the past few years. This includes tactics such as spending time with Dalit families, being there in farmers land agitations, and even letting other Congress leaders raise issues such as the Batla House encounter (in order to apparently appeal to the Muslim community).
However, the election results have totally thrown the Congress askew, not even their worst case projections told them that they would have got 50+ seats, not the mid-20′s that they got. But, this was compounded by the fact that they lost Goa, and were sure that they would win Punjab and Uttarakhand, which did not happen. Uttarakhand may provide the Congress with a fig leaf, in addition to the win in Manipur.
But as of now, one really does not expect the Congress to do any serious introspection about why they lost. They are more determined to prevent any of this taint from sticking to Rahul Gandhi. Rather than worry about their abysmal reputation in terms of corruption of the UPA government, there is a strong chance that the party will want a more populist budget and policies rather than try and ensure reform and development. The economy is slowing down, manufacturing is slow, and yet they do not see those as critical issues. At current trends, the Congress is not in a good shape, and the allies are likely to keep on throwing their weight.
The BJP is not in a better position. It actually reduced its count in UP, which means that it is not being seen as a party that is an alternative, and it is necessary to show a drastic improvement so as to attract allies over the country; else the BJP will always be stuck below the 150 level mark, and never be in a position to form the Government.

The big day of results for the elections in many states – tomorrow is the D day (March 6, 2012)

Without any doubt, the year 2011 was probably the worst year for the Congress led Government. The ongoing investigations into the 2G scam, the CommonWealth Games preparation, and many others kept on showcasing that levels of corruption were incredibly high. Some amount of acclaim by Baba Ramdev in his quest against black money, and then the initial high levels of support for the anti-corruption campaign by Anna Hazare (coupled with the fumbling efforts by the Government to respond to the campaigns and the high level of arrogance seen from the Government side) pushed the Government to the back-foot. And then the Government saw its own ally leading the quest against an effort by the Government to push for some reform, namely the effort to bring in 100% FDI in retail, which was defeated by a campaign by Mamta Banerjee.
The year 2012 is likely to be another interesting year for the Congress, with some decisions by the Supreme Court on 2G already pushing the Government on the backfoot. And there is the elections for the Presidency, which is seen as an important symbolic step, but where the Government has a wafer-thin majority. And this is another reason where the forthcoming elections results are so important. These are the elections in the states of Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Goa and Punjab. In many of these states, the Congress fancies its chances, especially in the states of Punjab, Goa, Manipur, and Uttaranchal.
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