Why farmers have to be defensive when they demand for an account of the performance of this government and its priorities? There is a news report and it is with full of data on the progress of the NREGA projects in Gujarat, Bihar, Orissa, MP, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. Also the two districts represented by Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Raghuvansh Prasad (Vaishali) in Bihar are also monitored. The NREGA, it is made clear, is yet to take off in these two constituencies.

“Not a single beneficiary has so far been enrolled for work under the NREGA that guarantees a minimum of 100 days work at minimum wage for needy people in 200 districts. Barring Assam, none of the 14 other Congress-ruled states is taking advantage of the NRGEA.” If the records are to be believed, not a single person has enrolled for work under the scheme in AP from where the top leadership launched the programme.

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A new optimism, high expectations mark the beginning.

Mr.H.D.Kumaraswamy, the new Chief Minister of Karnataka has taken over power in a more daring and a politically complicated manner. Yes, in politics sometimes things happen not in all rational and transparent manners.

But then political power is a reality. And now the new CM has taken over, there seems to be a great deal of earnestness and a serious minded commitment for giving the state a new deal.

Certainly the speed with which the new CM had gone about in launching the Metro Rail project would earn him a historic place in the scheme of things. All the signs of the times and his horoscope (he seems to be a great believer in god’s mercies) seem to be in his favor.

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Economists also can’t promote economic development!

We are having an economic expert as the Prime Minister. Is it an advantage or a disadvantage? A big question indeed! But we feel a time has come to ask such big questions. At least, for the sake of getting some clarity. Clarity on what is being aired everyday in the public realm as well as what is in fact the basic thrust for much of our economic development. The PM often, nay, in fact routinely talks of achieving an economic growth rate of 8/10 per cent. The Planning Commission Deputy too talks this way. Mr.Ahluwalia too is an economic expert in the mould of the PM.

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PM, Sonia Gandhi just talk casually!

About helping the farmers!

Who said the PM is a transparent man or really sensitive to farmers, farm decline or farm imports? Farmers’ suicides that continue don’t evoke any response from those in New Delhi. Delhi is really door hai! The PM, Sonia Gandhi or the FM don’t show any concern for all these things. They seem to inhabit a different, far-off rarified world.

After he expanded the Cabinet and after he held his second press conference the country found out in him a different persona. He seems to be a man for himself, confident in his own secret ways and he seems to be inviting criticisms, mild and strident, from a wider section of the media. He is called obfuscating (The Hindu).He seems to be full of “I, me and myself”(The Asian Age) and so on.

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