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Looking away from agriculture, UPA has always been relying mainly on manufacturing and services as dynamic drivers for India moving into a high growth trajectory, its passionate craving. Yet in a year of distinct slowdown in manufacturing and in segments of services, India could register an 8.5 per cent growth in 2010-11, thanks to a rebound in agriculture to 6.6 per cent from 0.4 per cent in the previous year. This underlines the enduring importance of agriculture for a country of our size (with food security still at the margins), even if monsoon turns erratic and not predictable in its volume or spread.

Believe it or not, billions are being doled out to India’s new generation energy companies at the cost of the nation, all in the name of deregulation. The government is now mulling to totally deregulate coal prices to facilitate new generation entrepreneurs to invest in coal mining at home and abroad. Electricity tariff is largely deregulated after providing a guaranteed return on capital cost on projects by energy companies. Costs are invariably inflated to help promoters rake in fatter profits. The principal beneficiaries of the government policy are just around a dozen companies and industrial houses, although their number is set to double in the next five years.

A group of experts writing the Congress history has squarely blamed the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her emergency as the main reason for the decline of the Congress in the Hindi heartland including Uttar Pradesh. Eyebrows are raised at the way Indira Gandhi has been criticized by these experts. The Congress disowned this view but the controversy is raging within the party on the reasons for decline of the Congress.

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh government has officially communicated to its people that they need not look towards it for solution of their problems. They should, instead, invoke Lord Hanuman. And the mighty Bajrangbali would make all their problems disappear—whether it is poverty or illiteracy, lack of drinking water or power shortage, burgeoning corruption or rising crime graph.

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party is holding a two day national conference at Agra on June 7 and 8 to concretise its strategy for dislodging the Mayawati Government from Uttar Pradesh in the assembly elections next year. The Party has already selected most of its candidates for the constituencies and the ensuing conference will work out plans for campaigning against the ruling BSP.

Sometimes an unexpected success creates unexpected problems. Before the Assam Assembly elections, speculations were rife that it would be a hung House, the Congress strength would decline further from 53 and the AGP, along with the BJP and some other parties may be able to knock together a majority to form the next ministry. In the event, the Congress strength went up from 53 to 78 in a House of 126, giving it an unassailable majority on its own. It no longer needed to depend on its old ally, the Bodo People’s Front.

Throughout the months when an entire parliamentary session was stalled by the BJP on the corruption issue, the party held a series of public meetings to lambaste the Manmohan Singh government. But none of its chief ministers was called to raise the decibel level. The reason was clear. Inviting chief ministers like Narendra Modi or Nitish Kumar might have livened up the show. But it would have entailed calling B.S. Yeddyurappa as well. The latter’s presence, however, at an anti-corruption rally would have been a hilarious spectacle in view of his dubious reputation.

“Haryana is where action is”. The slogan was coined in the early seventies to depict the development the state was making during the Bansi Lal regime. Now Haryana is a state where inaction is. The inaction, however, is not in the developmental arena where the state’s progress under the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government has been applauded. The inaction is in political and administrative fields, especially in police functioning.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two weeks into its formation, the Oommen Chandy-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Ministry in Kerala has been buffeted by a major crisis.