The prospects for the 12 months ahead form the core of expectations at every Diwali. This year there were lights as usual but there was little to cheer on the economic front. The Congress held a chintan baithak on Diwali eve and no one could have missed the lack of enthusiasm in the Congress ranks itself. Sonia Gandhi’s rhetoric attacking the Opposition would not mask the reality of the government losing its credibility with one scam after another coming out. The party is put off because the CAG, Vinod Rai, publicly charged the government as ‘brazen’ in its decision-making. The party says he was crossing the ‘Lakshman rekha’ set by the Constitution on the functions of the CAG. The government should ask what makes eminent constitutional authorities, one after the other, do this? Is it not their severe disappointment with the functioning of the prime minister? Not in the recent past has the Centre been openly described to be caught in a ‘policy paralysis’.

The Obama lesson to Dr Manmohan Singh in economic policy for India has rattled even the Congress leaders. It specifically mentions, among others, New Delhi’s lack of progress on FDI in retail. That gives out the real purpose of President Obama’s criticism of Indian economic policy. The US retail giants are over-eager to penetrate India’s growing retail market and capture it before it blooms into a trillion-dollar business for a consumer collective which is 300 million people now and could be at least 500 million in another five or six years.