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It would be purely an act of desperate political naiveté to construe that the Congress winning 27 seats in Bihar assembly would resurrect the party in Bihar and restore its old glory. This victory has given the party a major boost. But to get back the lost ground the leadership ought to reorient the class composition of the state leadership and strive hard to make its presence felt. Rahul Gandhi must admit that the Congress got the seats because of its joining the alliance. No doubt for the JD(U) and Nitish Kumar the 8 per cent committed Congress voters had its own importance, but it was the compulsion of survival that forced the Congress to join hands with the Mahagathbandhan.

It will not be till 2018 that the BJP and the Congress, purportedly the two poles of Indian politics, will meet in a frontal confrontation in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala continues to bleed from ‘internal injuries’ sustained in the local bodies election battle.

A series of assembly elections are due in next two years. It is clear that in none of the poll-bound states, Congress can get majority on its own. The party has, therefore, to forge Bihar type of combination in other states too. After the success of Bihar experiment, Congress is now exploring the possibilities of alliance in the states going to polls in March and April next year. Discussions are on in at various levels to forge alliance with like-minded parties in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam. In Kerala, the Congress is already heading a six-party ruling alliance—United Democratic Front (UDF).

One of the major cause for BJP’s debacle in the recent elections to the Bihar state assembly was that Prime Minister Modi’s assurance of acche din – good days - did not reach the people at the grassroots level. The people of the country gave BJP a bumper victory in the last parliamentary polls with the hope that they would soon see cherish the fruits of development assured by the Prime Minister. But their hopes were belied. Modi wave gradually started declining. He did launch ambitious programmes like Make in India, Digital India, Swacch Bharat (Clean India) Smart Cities. But these programmes have long gestation periods and need patience to wait for the results. People want immediate results on the ground. These programme need huge investments from both domestic and foreign sources. Efforts were done to simplify the project clearance procedures and attract foreign direct investments. The result was that Modi began to be perceived as an advocate of crony capitalism. In immediate term no such projects fructified to augment the promised job opportunity.

It is essential to step back a little to examine, understand and evaluate what is happening around the world of currency. At the end of the current month, the International Monetary Fund will take a call on inclusion of China’s currency, the remenbi or in short yuan, in its SDR (Special Drawing Rights) basket. Earlier in 2010, the IMF had summarily rejected China’s bid to get yuan in the SDR.

In the Winter Session of parliament next week, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his managers would certainly attempt to push hard the pending economic reform measures though they also know the little chance of their success. They will be facing the determined opposition buoyed with the political advantage they got from the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Bihar elections. The opponents would not relent regardless of its consequence to national economy and its pace of growth.
The finance minister Arun Jaitley would be wasting his time in convincing the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on the imperative need to rationalize the state tax structure for goods and services to a uniform pattern.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a plethora of challenges when he returns from his foreign trip at the end of the week. The immediate impact of the Grand Alliance’s massive Bihar victory this month will be felt in the ensuing winter session of Parliament, as an emboldened combined opposition is likely to make it a washout. A win for the NDA could have given the Modi government the much-needed political authority to push its long-pending reform bills but the poll results have given the opposition an advantage.

The BJP high command might have singled out Shatrughan Sinha for accusing Narendra Modi and Amit Shah responsible for electoral debacle of the party in Bihar election, but the fact is he is not lone campaigner against the leadership.

Decks have been cleared for the much touted and long awaited TAPI gas pipeline project that would bring gas from Turkmenistan to India and Pakistan. The ambitious $10 billion project, which has had a checkered past, has gained momentum particularly after the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Turkmenistan in July and more recently in October by External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to work out the nitty-gritty of the project.