A joke heard in Kerala during the elections:

Son: Father, what is the Indo-American Nuclear Pact?

Father: I don’t know much about it, son. But it must be a good thing because the Communists are opposing it.

The Communists were opposing the Congress in the elections as well. Is that why the electorate thought the Congress-led UPA is good for the country and voted overwhelmingly for the alliance?

Most people in Kerala had believed that the UPA would win. On March 8, I met Prof. Robins Jacob at Cochin. He is the head of the Economics Department at St. Albert’s College. When he repeated the same prediction, I asked him why. He, being a senior academic, would not make such statements lightly.

The main reason that Robins gave was the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). It guarantees 100 days of paid employment in a year to rural households. I was only casually aware of it, but Robins is a well-studied man. According to him, the project had made a tremendous impact.

Over that weekend I happened to get firsthand information on NREGS at my village, Olavipe. Many families had benefited by the scheme. And it covered long overdue jobs like cleaning of canals.

The next four snippets are based on reports that appeared on The Times of India:

Youthful Parliament? That seems to be the general impression about the new (15^th) Lok Sabha. It is, when compared to the previous one. But it is interesting to compare it with the first two Parliaments:

Ladies to the fore. The new Lok Sabha has record breaking presence of women members – 58. That is more than 10% of its total strength. Sounds good, does it not? But it is far below the proposed 33% reservation for women.

Rich man’s Parliament. If the crorepathi (multi-millionaire) Members of Parliament were to form the government, they would have more than sufficient majority – 300 out of 543. That is a 95% increase over the previous Lok Sabha. An example of India continuing to shine? Congress leads the BJP 137-58 in this aspect.

Parliamentarians of different hues. The new Lok Sabha has about 150 members who have pending criminal cases against them. This is approximately 22% more than the 14^th Lok Sabha. And here, BJP (42) just pips the Congress (41).