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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Government in Kerala seems singularly incapable of taking any step without creating a controversy.

Why Pakistan army whipped up tension on LOC in Kashmir and indulged in such a gruesome act as beheading an Indian soldier? The reason could be the current state of affairs in India’s neighbourhood. A lot is happening in Pakistan, the main being that the moderates in army have revised their India-specific security threat to declare domestically bred terrorism a bigger danger than India. Also, the country is in election mode; general elections are due in the first half of 2013.

Like a bad penny, the problem of the Rohingiyas keeps cropping up and continues to plague three countries in South Asia. Last Thursday, January 10, its ripples reached Barasat in north 24 Parganas, West Bengal. The Railway police arrested 12 people including some children, who had escaped from Myanmar, entered Bangladesh and then illegally crossed over into India. Their movements and behaviour aroused local suspicion and the police arrested them around 10 pm from Barasat station.

The stage is being set for what looks like a ‘Sonia Gift’ of Telengana by January 28, in a political gamble to salvage as many Lok Sabha seats as possible for the Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, even in a truncated Andhra Pradesh, now no longer its stronghold. The desperate move is designed mainly to counter the perceived challenge of YSR Congress of imprisoned Mr Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, MP, who commands a considerable following in Rayalaseema and Coastal districts.

The bad news is Sensex, the 30-share sensitive index of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), is soaring again merely on sentiment and official announcements and not on logic. The Sensex briefly breached the psychology-booster 20,000-mark on January 15, a day after the doubly auspicious Makar Sankranti and Purna Kumbha at Ganga Sagar and Allahabad, respectively. The next day, it dropped marginally by 0.86 percent on the indication from the Reserve Bank governor, Dubburi Subbarao, that the current inflation rate did not warrant an immediate interest rate cut.

What is ailing the Congress? More than anything else, it is the widening communication gap, which is responsible for the present state of affairs. Gone are the days when a scribe or a worker could walk into the house of a leader and meet him. Day by day the leaders are moving away from the public and living in their secure bungalows, while the disconnect gets wider and wider. The Congress leaders are expected to propagate the achievements of the party but they have missed every opportunity to strike a rapport with the electorate.