Daily News Headlines

What has perhaps been dominating the news headlines in the past few days is the completion of one year in office by the UPA Government in its second avtaar. But the issues that dominated and almost became daily news in the functioning of the UPA-II this past one year were : naxal violence, the Government and the Congress part talking in different tones, the Prime Minister not intervening on important issues, even in Parliament and perhaps the criticism that PM was more obsessed with foreign policy rather than domestic problems.

In fact, the Naxal attacks this past one were so ferocious that they part of daily news in both print and electronic medium. In fact, as recently as two days back it was back in the current headline were Naxals blew up a bus killing innocent civilians in Dantewada. If that was not sufficient, the Home Minister P Chidambaram hit the headlines when in an interview to NDTV he commented that he was working with a limited mandate.

To add confusion to the Naxal chaos was the Government and the Congress party talking in different tunes. Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh launched a scathing attack which writing in a daily newspaper criticising Chidambaram's handling of the Naxal situation. Then there was Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh who criticized the Home Ministry's handling of clearance to Chinese firms. The two issues again hogged the news headlines for a number of days.

Not a day passed when Naxal violence was not part of the daily news forcing even the PM to describe it as the single biggest challenge to internal security. Similarly PM showed little resolve by not participating in important debates in Parliament though his intervention would have helped clarify the Government's stand. This gave an opportunity to the opposition to describe him as a ``weak PM.'' The UPA thus was in news perhaps for all the wrong reasons this past one year.

Similarly, PM was also criticized in news by analysts for being obsessed with Indo-Pak relation. As news headlines often said that if in UPA-I PM was focused on Indo-US relations, in UPA-II its Indo-Pak.

But there were some achievements also. For instance issues like Right to Education hit the headlines highlighting how committed the UPA was to basic education for children. This was a classic example of how with little planning the Government could be in news for all the right reason rather than the wrong ones.

Mike Smith is is freelance market analyst and is writing reviews articles on News Headlines, Daily News and Current Headlines.