In 1970, when Edward Heath was running against Harold Wilson, the incumbent Prime Minister, he promised to cut inflation ‘at a stroke’. When he won, he realised how difficult it was to implement in office what you think is easy when outside. Something like this is going on about the Lokpal Bill and the furore surrounding yet another ‘fast unto death’ (FUD), which seems to have rattled the government for reasons which are hard to fathom.

What can be more shocking than a man saying that he has forgotten how many wives he has? It becomes further appalling when this statement is given by a political figure elected by lakhs of people. This forgetful man is JDU MP Mangani Lal Mandal who quite confidently admitted before the court of law that he is oblivious of the number of his wives.

It seems that the plight of sports persons is becoming poorer by the day. The recent attack on national football and volley ball player Arunima Sinha alias Sonu has shocked all. She was thrown out of the train where she lost her leg and hence lost her dream of becoming an eminent sports person forever. [...]

While some well wishers of the country were discussing about the pros and cons of the indirect form of elections in Panchayat, Block and District levels; a little birdy told us that Mayawati government has planned similar style of elections for the Local Body and Mayor elections too.

The judicial process is so slow in India that by the time the victim gets the justice it becomes too late to celebrate success, be happy or recover from the loss. Similar thing happened with Deendayal Garg who at last got justice in his case but still the culprit continued holding his post. Things became difficult for him as the culprit belonged to the ruling party. He had filed a complaint against Gaur Gopal Sharma, president of Govardhan Nagar Panchayat that despite winning he had to face many ugly situations. Sharma was declared guilty by the state ombudsman and was suspended by the Chief Secretary but inspite of this he will continue to hold his post unless the election notification is released in June.

The call of Sri Lanka’s Sports Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage for the cricketers to come back to the country to prepare for the England tour has put all the IPL teams in trouble. Cricketers are in a dilemma as they have been given a deadline to come back by 5th May. This is not practically possible for the players as the matches will last till 28th May. They cannot leave the matches in the middle.

On the one hand Anna’s protest at Jantar Mantar was creating history while on the other hand probe was going on in Bihar as the state treasury faces a loss of 407 crores. CAG was investigating the case. The current report of CAG says that against the rules, none of the departments informed the Accountant General about the forgery and also could not give an account of the action taken against those who were held responsible for this irregularity in the state treasury. CAG said that 1021 incidences of irregularity were found in 23 departments of the state.

I have been visiting my in-law’s house since I got married about a decade ago but of late for the first time I got to visit their native village. It was a nice experience to go there and observe a new Bihar. While going to Gaya I noticed that Bihar’s roads have become well constructed. During Lalu’s regime there was nothing called roads in Bihar. A man used to cover 4 hours journey in 11 hours. Everything was looking normal during the journey. No terror like situation was there; law and order was perfect.

Soon after the cricket world cup the commencement of IPL-4 has given the Indians another chance to enjoy cricket. The only difference is that the so called heartthrobs of cricket will not be playing for their respective countries.

All of a sudden one can see a sense of discipline and devotion in the BSP (Bahujan Samjwadi Party) camp. It seems that Mayawati has decided to enter the 2012 Assembly Election battle field with a huge crescendo. The desire of vote bank has inculcated a sense of responsibility in Mayawati popularly known as ‘Bahanji’.