It is time the government tries to salvage its mandate.

The UPA led government appears to be fast loosing its public mandate to rule. It desperately needs some miracle to save its sinking ship.

The government is trying to save its face by showing some courage on the economics front. Some good bold decisions that have been pending for the last couple of years were taken by the government. The results of these decisions will take some time to become apparent so fingers are crossed and all we can do is to wait and watch.

I strongly believe there are two things the government can do to save its image...

1. Take Action against the Corrupt

Till date the government has taken a tough stand against all those who have spoken against corruption in the country. The biggest dents to the image of the government is the way it has handled mass movements...

• The midnight lathi-charge against peaceful protesters who were sleeping - Ramdeo's Hunger Strike at Delhi. 
• The arrest of Anna Hazare when he was going to start his Hunger Strike demanding that the Jan Lokpal Bill be enacted.
• The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal when he wanted to meet the Prime Minister demanding the ouster of Salman Khurshid for the alleged submission of forged documents in related to the grant for aid-n-appliances for the physically challenged.

But this will have to change... it is time the government goes tough on the corrupt. Cut the crap about negativity around corruption. There are glaring examples of corruption at high levels that cannot be denied - 2G, CWG, Coalgate.

2. Get some good advisers

The biggest constituent of the UPA, i.e. the Congress party certainly needs some good advisers on its interaction with the people specially on issues related to the masses. Today corruption and inflation are the two most burning issues that the Congress has been unable to tackle very well. The high-handedness of the top leaders of the party is working very much against it.


The type of irrelevant and unrelated statements that this party's so-called leaders makes one wonder whether they even know what they are saying.

Poverty Line - Another Flip-Flop from the Government

The poverty-line affidavit submitted by the planning commission in the Supreme Court of India has become another flip-flip opportunity for the Congress led UPA Government at the center in India.

It may be recollected that the Planning Commission had submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court in September 2011 in which it had mentioned that an urban Indian needed Rs 32 per day while his rural counterpart required Rs 26 to make both ends meet. The Planning Commission had faced a lot of criticism for the poverty lines defined in the affidavit.

Now, the flip-flop specialist Government of India is once again readying itself to go back on this stand. Today after a series of meetings with representatives of the government including the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Planning Commission Chairman Montek Singh held a press conference together with Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, in which they have stated that a new formula will be evolved to determine the poverty level -

i.e., The government is clearly once again in a mood to do a flip-flop in its stand within 2 weeks for having taken one. To support his flip-flop the government is spending crores to carry out what it is calling a Socio-Economic and Caste-Economic census. 

Fingers pointed at P. Chidambaram's role in 2G scam

Another embarrassing moment for the Congress led UPA government at the center in India.

This time a note has come forward. This note prepared by the Department of Economic Affairs, an office under Pranab Mukherjee, current Finance Minister of India, was sent to PMO on 25 March 2011. It has raised questions on the actions and inaction of P. Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister of India in connection with the 2G scam.

The note - an 11-page document - describes that the Finance Ministry had demanded that the 2G spectrum be auctioned. According to a report in the Times of India, the note says that P. Chidambaram had overruled the recommendations of the ministry - the Ministry of Finance - that demanded that 2G spectrum be auctioned.

"DoT could have invoked this clause (5.1 of the UAS license) for cancelling licences in case MoF had stuck to the stand of auctioning the 4.4 MHz spectrum," the note says.

The note, directly casts a shadow of suspicion on the role played by the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum allocation which is said to have caused a loss of Rs. 50000 crore to Rs. 1.76 lakh crore to the Indian exchequer.

The timing of this note becoming public could not have been worse for the ruling UPA coalition, whose credibility has been severely compromised in the past few months. The note was given by PMO to an RTI activitist in response to an RTI request.

Onion Export - Another Rollback by UPA Government

Something is really not working right for the Congress-led UPA government at the center in India.

Since its almost successful panga (पंगा) with Baba Ramdeo during his hunger protest against black money in middle of the night at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, almost every decision of the government seems to be backfiring, further denting its already low credibility.

The latest in the series is, today's (20-Sept-2011) announcement of a roll-back by the Government on its decision that it had taken on 9-Sept-2011 to ban the export of onion.

This time the government has bowed down to the protest by the farmers against the ban.

Common-on GOI - get your act together, and do something right for a change.

CAG Reports on KG Basin and Air India

The reports on KG Basin and Air India by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) raises issues on the working of both DGH and Air India.

The issues raised in turn put heat on the UPA government which is already under public scrutiny for the way it has been responding to the common man's concerns on corruption and irregularities of the top politicians and bureaucrats.

In the KG Basin report titled Report No. - 19 of 2011-12 for the period ended March 2011 - Performance Audit of Hydrocarbon Production Sharing Contracts (Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas), CAG raised questions on the working of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and the monitoring of the provisions of the Production Sharing Contract (PSC). According to CAG there was an apparent violation of the terms of the PSC by Reliance.

In its Air India Audit report titled Report No. - 18 of 2011-12 for the period ended March 2011 - Performance Audit of Civil Aviation in India (Ministry of Civil Aviation), CAG has submitted its observations over the acquisition of aircrafts and the Merger of Air India and Indian Airlines.