Congress cannot be beaten.

In the next few days we shall get to see a game of chicken in our parliament. Foreign Direct Investment or FDI, which will allow foreign investors to hold majority stake in multi-brand retail and increased share in insurance, airlines and broadcasting, will be debated and voted on. Congress sees this as one of its main weapons to win the next general elections to be held by 2014. As opposed to Foreign Institutional Investors,  who invest in the stock market, bonds and the property sector and can sell out in an instant, FDI is seen as stable long term investment which will help in reducing the Current Account Deficit, improve infrastructure and create thousands of jobs. However, many parties are against FDI because they say that companies like Walmart will destroy small grocery shops, also called kirana stores, and create enormous job losses. After resisting for a long time the Congress has agreed to a debate in the Lok Sabha, followed by a vote. Here is where the fun starts. The Congress needs 273 votes to win but has 206 itself. It can definitely count on the DMK with 18 seats, NCP with 9 seats, RLD with 5 seats, National Conference with 3 and others with 7 seats giving it a total of 248. The DMK tried to play cute but was brought to heel easily because Ms Kanimozhi, daughter of Mr Karunanidhi, is implicated in the 2G scam and the Congress has the power to get all charges dismissed. It probably has the BSP with 21 seats in the bag because the BSP was thrashed in the recent UP elections and will be keen on avoiding a drastic reduction in the number of seats which will rule out Ms Mayawati's prime ministerial ambitions. Also, all charges in the Taj corridor case against Ms Mayawati have been dropped recently and she would be keen not to see them revived. This means that the Congress can count on 269 votes and needs just 4 more to scrape through. The SP won the recent elections in UP with an overall majority so logic dictates that it should be keen to have early parliamentary elections so that it can increase its tally from 22 at present. However, it has come in for strong criticism lately for the increase in violent crime in UP and needs a lot of money to balance the budget. The Chief Minister promised free laptops to every student and has recently forgiven loans of up to Rs 50,000 from rural co-operative banks to 720,000 farmers on his father's birthday, for a total of Rs 16.5 billion. Besides the SP would like a Congress led government at the center because the Congress is always likely to be generous to UP as it elects 80 MPs to parliament and Ms Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi stand from UP. The Congress wants elections as late as possible to bring down inflation, stimulate growth and create a feelgood effect. The cards seem to be stacked in its favor and it seems that it cannot be beaten. However.......