The lament of Indian intellectuals.

These are testing times for the leftist ' intellectuals ' of India. They do not understand why the Congress is not taking credit for all the wonderful things it did. Infant Mortality Rate has dropped 28%, from 58 per 1000 live births in 2004 to 42 in 2012. Maternal Mortality Rate has dropped 36%, from 280 per 100,000 live births in 2005 to 178 in 2012. Rural teledensity increased from 1.4% to 40%. Why didn't the Prime Minister shout these achievements from the ramparts? Why didn't he deny the accusations of trillions of rupees stolen in the 2G and Coalgate scams? The Congress did rubbish all the figures and did accuse the Comptroller and Auditor General of bias but could not explain how telecom licenses were issued out of turn and why we are having to import expensive coal from abroad when India has 250 billion tonnes of coal reserves. Although statistics of mortality have improved the figures of childhood malnutrition are dismal even though the government is spending billions on daycare centers run by ' anganwadis '. To his opponents Mr Singh is a pretender who has taken credit for the economic liberalisation initiated by Mr Narasimha Rao and is the consummate civil servant, always ready to please his master. Therein lies the problem. Where leftists see a polite, soft spoken man who is scrupulously honest opponents see a weak man who obeys any order, never protests when humiliated in public and whose ' honesty ' is a cloak of invisibility, allowing others to loot trillions of taxpayer rupees. Leftists love the MGNREGA scheme, conceived by the National Advisory Council of Ms Sonia Gandhi, which pays the rural poor for 100 days of fictitious work every year but critics blame the waste of money on populist schemes for the lack of jobs. The slump in the sale of automobiles may have resulted in the loss of 200,000 jobs. The Rs 2.5 trillion spent on the MGNREGA scheme, Rs 750 billion on farmers' loans waiver, the Sixth Pay Commission and other schemes should have been spent on productive infrastructure. Despite sitting on vast mineral deposits we are having to import minerals from abroad at great cost. Although we have over 7000 miles of coast line we have been able to extract very little offshore oil or gas while the US has over 4000 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone and is becoming self sufficient in gas through fracking. Today petrol costs $3.6 dollars for 3.8 liters of petrol in the US, which is Rs 60 per liter, while it costs over Rs 70 in India. So for every leftist intellectual who sees marvelous achievements of the Congress there are plenty who see economic disaster. Or maybe they are not intellectuals at all. Just a bunch of pseuds with loud voices.