Its composition, as we see below, is unbalanced in numerous ways. The UPA fielded Ms Meira Kumar as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha after she had already been sworn in as water resources minister. This, and the manner of Mr. Shrikant Jena's induction, speak of indecision and confusion. Mr. Jena was understandably unhappy at being made a minister of state (MoS) after having been a full Cabinet minister twice earlier.

The messy Cabinet-formation process has taken some of the sheen off the UPA's victory. Its ugliest part was the DMK's crass bargaining for lucrative berths—to the point of blackmailing Dr. Manmohan Singh. Although Dr. Singh barely managed to keep out the notoriously corrupt former minister TR Baalu, he yielded to DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's pressure to include six DMK MPs in the Council of Ministers, including three Cabinet ministers.

It's regrettable that the Congress's infamous “dynasty principle” is now extended to other parties. The DMK is guided solely by power succession within the family of Mr. Karunanidhi (86), which means accommodating one of his two sons at the Centre so the other one takes over in Tamil Nadu. The Abdullahs (including Farooq, Omar, and Sachin Pilot), the Pawars, the Sangmas, and Maneka and Varun Gandhi too have been infected by the dynasty bug.

As many as 50 of the 81 MPs who are 40 years old or younger come from “political families”. Their proportion is highest in the Congress: 22 of its 25 young MPs are related to politicians. This is also true of first-time MPs under 40. The 15th Lok Sabha has 58 of them. A good 25 belong to political families.

Politics, like careers in film acting and legal or medical practice, has more than ever become an estate to be inherited by one's relations. This trend towards the monopolistic appropriation of power by a handful of families runs against the overall healthy trend expressed in the election results: participation, inclusion, diversity and plurality. Sadly, for every positive indicator contained in the results, there's a negative too.

Thus, the number of women MPs in the Lok Sabha has hearteningly crossed the 10-percent mark to reach 58. Regrettably, almost two-thirds of them are close relations of male politicians. Seventeen, or more than half, of the 29 “fresh female faces” are proxies or substitutes for their fathers, husbands, brothers or fathers-in-law. This at least partially negates the election's very welcome gender-empowering aspect, and further narrows the circle representing control over power, aggravating imbalances in Parliamentary representation.

The UPA could have corrected some of these imbalances by forming a more diverse Council of Ministers with greater dispersal of power. But it hasn't. Indeed, the Council has greater concentration of power than the parties that contribute to it.

Even more serious are the regional and community-based imbalances in the Council. Thus, nine of the 33 full Cabinet Ministers are Rajya Sabha MPs and one (Vilasrao Deshmukh) hasn't been elected to either House. Regional satraps have disproportionately high Cabinet representation. Nine Cabinet ministers are former Chief Ministers, from five states (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh).

The state-wise distribution of the Council of Ministers is even more skewed, with Tamil Nadu claiming 10 positions, followed by Maharashtra (nine), West Bengal (eight, its highest ever) and Kerala (six). By contrast, Uttar Pradesh, four times bigger than Kerala, has just five ministers, all of them MoSs. And Bihar has only one minister. So do Orissa and Assam.

The most striking under-representation is that of the Hindi heartland (UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.) The heartland has only 16 positions in the 79-strong Council despite the UPA winning 65 seats from there. This stands in sharp contrast to 2004, when the UPA had 59 MPs but 24 ministers from the Hindi belt.

Two of the game-changer states, UP and Andhra Pradesh—where the Congress won 21 and 33 states respectively—are poorly represented. Andhra has just one Cabinet minister (and five MoSs). UP has no Cabinet minister at all—at least partly because Mr. Rahul Gandhi kept out of the government, and the Congress wanted to assert his primacy and indispensability.

However, Maharashtra, where the Congress and NCP together won 25 seats, has five Cabinet ministers. And Kerala, where the Congress won 13 seats, has six ministers, including two of Cabinet rank. Yet, Rajasthan, another site of Congress victory (21 of 25 seats), gets only one Cabinet minister (and three MoSs).

Dalits are relatively well-represented in the Council, with four Cabinet berths and five MoSs including one with independent charge—Krishna Tirath. This, like Ms Kumar's nomination as Speaker, reflects the Congress's preoccupation with countering Ms Mayawati. But Adivasis have only one Cabinet position. Similarly, states with large tribal populations, like Chhattisgarh, Arunachal, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura, have been left out of the Council altogether.

Muslims played a major role in the Congress's victory, especially in UP. But there are only five Muslims in the Council. Only two (Ghulam Nabi Azad and Farooq Abdullah) are Cabinet ministers. None of the five, barring Salman Khursheed, is from the Hindi heartland. Two are from J&K, and one each from Kerala and West Bengal. If the principle of “fair representation” advocated by the Sachar Committee were applied, there should have been 11 Muslims in the Council. Strangely, a seasoned leader like Salman Khursheed wasn't given Cabinet rank. Had he, with Shree Prakash Jaiswal, an OBC, been made a Cabinet minister, UP would have had a better profile.

The Congress promised to be inclusive, to reaffirm secularism and to give Muslims long-denied justice. Dr. Singh even said the religious minorities have the first claim to social sector programmes. But just as the Congress fought shy of implementing the affirmative action measures for underprivileged Muslims (NB: not Muslims as Muslims, but educationally and socially backward Muslims) recommended by the Sachar Committee, it also failed to give adequate political representation to them.

The Congress/UPA must correct this anomaly. Muslims have long been under-represented in India's political life. They form 13.4 percent of the population, but only 5.5 percent of Lok Sabha MPs are Muslims. Their absolute number has fallen from 34 in 2004 to 30. Of these 30, 11 belong to the Congress, four to the BSP, four to Muslim parties like the IUML and AUDF, and three each to the Trinamool Congress and National Conference. The Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Telugu Desam have no Muslim MPs.

Two factors explain this. First, the first-past-the-post electoral system favours geographically concentrated groups, but discriminates against groups that are dispersed. Seat reservation for SCs in some constituencies where Muslims are concentrated further magnifies the exclusion. Second, many parties under-nominate Muslims as candidates on the “winnability” criterion.

The problem can be resolved only if secular parties consciously give more nominations and better representation to Muslims. The Congress hasn't done that—despite warning signs of Muslim disaffection and the rise of new Muslim parties in UP. It must correct course.

The choice of certain ministers also raises uncomfortable questions about the UPA's policy direction. For instance, Mr. SM Krishna, a novice to international affairs, has been made Foreign Minister. He's likely to find himself out of his depth—unlike the savvy, experienced and sharp Pranab Mukherjee. But perhaps Dr. Singh prefers a weak Foreign Minister because he wants to play an active role in the Ministry along with Mr. Shashi Tharoor, a first-time MP (indeed, a first-time voter), with experience of international, not Indian, diplomacy. Put bluntly, Mr. Tharoor is strongly pro-Western and pro-US and uncritical of Israel. Moving closer to the US and Israel isn't the right direction for India's foreign policy.

Similarly, Mr. Kapil Sibal has been given charge of Human Resources Development just when commercial institutions and foreign universities are making a strong bid to enter the Indian education market. He's known to favour unbridled privatisation. The very first event he attended as HRD Minister was a business-sponsored meeting. This sends a bad signal.

Environment and forests minister of state Jairam Ramesh says the Prime Minister has asked him to work to “correct the public perception of the Ministry (…) that it's a hurdle to economic growth. We need to have a more business-friendly and transparent regulatory system.” This signals capitulation to industry lobbies and a further whittling down of environmental regulation which has already been greatly diluted. The MoEF is now clearing three projects a day—obviously without adequate scrutiny or applying its mind.

None of this speaks of a healthy policy evolution. If the new government wants to remain true to its electoral mandate, it must keep away from the deregulation-privatisation agenda and focus on policies that are unabashedly pro-poor. (IPA Service)