Average inflation has almost doubled in UPA II: Zarabi

According to a CNN-IBN poll of urban India, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, which completes four years in office on May 22 this year, has lost its credibility and stands on very shaky ground. 61 percent of those polled said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be replaced as prime minister. While only 37 per cent said they were in favour of him continuing in the post, 2 per cent could not decide. A majority agree that the Achilles' heel of the UPA is massive corruption. Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief, CNN-IBN, Siddharth Zarabi, economic policy editor, CNBC-TV18 and Sunil Jain, columnist, Financial Express discuss the implications of all of that and more.

Here is the edited transcript of the discussion on CNBC-TV18

Q: It is very clear urban India has lost patience as far as this government is concerned. Urban India is not satisfied with this government, urban India feels that this government and the Prime Minister have lost all creditability.

Sardesai: The figures of the poll clearly show there is extremely strong anti-incumbent – there is anger. If you look at the numbers they clearly show that people have lost faith in Manmohan Singh. When we say urban India, it can cut across classes. It doesn’t just include the middle class, it also includes people who live in the slums.

Inflation and rising prices followed by corruption is usually the case with every poll. But it is also the perception of drift, of lack of governance and a lack of leadership. I think that is the problem. What it shows is Manmohan Singh, on whom the middle class and the urban India had reposed a lot of faith in 2009, except Bangalore every other major city had gone towards the UPA has clearly felt betrayed by the last five years of promises that have not been met.

Q: I want to pick on that point because to my mind that was the big surprise, the lost of faith in Manmohan Singh as an individual and the loss of faith in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) because when we have asked questions like is the PMO covering up scams, majority – two thirds of the respondents think that yes the PMO is trying to cover up scams. The Prime Minister has not seen as either bold or tough talking in taking decisions, the performance of Manmohan Singh across the board more than half the respondents have voted his performance in the second term as four.

Jain: I completely agree with Rajdeep, the middle class seems to be fed up and they want things to happen. However, let us also realise that India is not just a middle class, there is a non-middle class. India is not just urban; there is a rural India which we need to take into account.

Having said that I will say a couple of things here, one, if you are going to have an election today I have no doubt in my mind that the Congress will do very badly. In fact generally elections are never won by a party they are actually lost by parties.

So, the Congress would do very badly if an election be held. Purely from the government’s point of view with the economy bottoming out, with inflation for example which is one of the things that your poll shows up we have beaten the hell out of inflation.

So, if this government is able to just stay on for another six to eight months, you clear a couple of big projects – there is a big city called Dholera in Gujarat which is coming, it is Rs 70,000 crore city, where Siddharth lives in Dwarka there is a Rs 20,000 crore exhibition centre coming up - you see four or five big projects like this coming up and the mood changes.

Q: This government is probably going to hope that they are able to push this along to early next year if not all the way to May.

Zarabi: The average inflation has actually almost doubled in UPA II. Agricultural growth has almost fallen, gross domestic product (GDP) growth has fallen off the cliff. So, I don’t think inflation is bottoming out. It is the governments managed wholesale price index (WPI) indicator. Consumer price index (CPI) inflation is far ahead of that.

The biggest problem right now is the loss of the Prime Minister's authority and nothing exemplifies it better than Ashwani Kumar who was supposed to be the Prime Minister’s man doing nothing on important files.

Kapil Sibal coming in clearing file upon file every day and that should tell us about how much the Prime Minister has lost his own person who refused to let go was doing nothing on reforms.