Opinion All change

The Budget session did go forward after all and even the Budget speech went smoothly.

March 6, 2011 11:52 PM IST First published on: Mar 6, 2011 at 11:52 PM IST

The Budget session did go forward after all and even the Budget speech went smoothly. The JPC has been conceded and the PAC will go on its own investigation. The CVC has been finally forced out by the Supreme Court and Raja and Kalmadi have had their collars felt.

But yet,there is no sense of anything having been settled. The Budget itself was low key,full of small moves but no gesture which caught the imagination. The rather meagre upgrading of income tax threshold from Rs 1.6 lakhs to Rs. 1.8 lakhs itself gave out a message that as far as the UPA is concerned,urban and even rural middle classes do not deserve a break. They may complain about inflation but the government believes the middle classes have done well out of UPA2 and can take it on the chin. Inflation for the UPA is not a problem to be solved but to flaunt as an achievement,because it is all a result of the poor eating better,thanks to NREGA .

This may be a huge misjudgment. Five state elections are coming up and we will know the verdict of the people by May 13. Congress is the majority party only in Assam but even so it has minority interest in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Indian voters do not forgive the incumbent for inflation. Whatever the excuse,there will be hell to pay on May 13. I expect that AIADMK will win,putting the DMK -Congress alliance at risk. Congress may itself change horses in midstream and abandon DMK for the rest of the UPA2 tenure much as NDA did. There are after all no principles at stake in any of these alliances except secularism which is not a dividing line in Tamil Nadu as between Amma and the Kalaignar

In West Bengal,I would expect a tight result. Many people are saying that the CPM will lose massively after thirty five years in power. But inflation will hurt Mamata Banerjee as will the Maoist association. She can hardly complain about the harmad forces of CPM when her Naxalite friends are no better. It is also not clear that she has any alternative policy package for West Bengal. Everyone who says she will win adds that West Bengal will continue to decline if that happens.

The tough judgement for Congress will be what to do if it wins just enough seats to become the balancing force. Pranab Mukherjee hinted that he has a large swathe of legislation to pass on banking and insurance and he will need outside support in Parliament for that. This means BJP/NDA,but also the Left. Here again,there will be a temptation to abandon Didi and go for the old cosy relation with the Left. The PM may be still mad with the Left for what it did on the US nuclear deal in the previous Parliament but there are many in Congress who miss their comrades.

The lack of a clear message in the Budget either for further liberal reform or at least one populist gesture tells me that Congress is in a stalemate about its future direction. The PM has been left out to dry by his colleagues with none coming to his aid either before or after his Press Conference. His confession about his majboori was as much a swipe at his party as the coalition partners. You could see his anger in his exchanges with Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha on the ISRO issue. Here was an angry Manmohan Singh,who could give as much as he could take. Some of that anger is directed against his own side.

A reshuffle is promised again. The Cabinet looks old and tired. There is a wealth of talent in the next but one generation in the Congress-the boys and girls in their 40s beginning with you-know-who. Even the coalition partners have similar talent. Even if they are raw,they should be given their chance to make their own mistakes. Those currently in the Cabinet have had their innings and they are not the answer so much as part of the problem.

Will there be real change? More likely Ireland will win the World Cup!