Of course, I would have liked the election results to have been the other way round. [1] But, of the remaining alternatives, what the electorate has handed down is the best one. While many had been celebrating the trend towards coalitions – “The real India is coming into its own… India’s vibrant diversity is asserting itself…” – I had been alarmed by the descent towards more and more fractured results; leading to more and more splintered legislatures; leading to more and more unprincipled and weaker and weaker “coalitions” – in which each partner is a law unto itself, weaker and weaker coalitions; not just coalitions with more and more parties as members, but coalitions with weaker and weaker cores. In the event, that perilous trend has been stemmed.

And the team that has taken office this time is more reassuring. The principal ministers are persons of substantial experience; none of them has the sort of taint that marred several ministers in the first Manmohan Singh Government; equally important, the principal ministers are ones who are less liable to ignite the acrimony that characterized the last five years.

As a result, the Government will have none of the alibis it relied on last time – the Communists, the allies. And the Opposition will have to work much harder to discharge its proper role. Indeed, for all parties, there are the same two lessons.
• Inside Parliament, each should seek to engage others in a competition for advancing the better ideas and proposals. No one will gain merely by shouting about problems – people know the problems that afflict them; after all, they live them. They will have to be convinced that this side rather than the other has the better solutions, that it has worked out the solutions in detail, that it holds better promise of implementing the solutions rather than its rivals.
• Outside Parliament, the singular course for each party is that wherever whoever is in office should provide exemplary governance.

... contd.