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Illustration/ Sameer Pawar

Coordinating committee meetings may come and go. Some have more fire. Others more brimstone. Reading straws in the wind can be an engrossing and specialist task in New Delhi.

There are those who believe, with good reason that the logic of maintaining Ronen Sen as the Indian ambassador in Washington was entirely based on the government expectation of signing the nuclear agreement in the next few months.

Given the fact that the man had been admonished by Parliament for statements that were alleged to have been made by him, it had seemed likely that he would not get an extension, given the furore he had raised.

Even if it was just because there was no consensus on a replacement, the extension by a year had seemed a rather visible straw-in-the-wind.

The litany of logic that followed this mere straw was that this was indicative of the government preparing to sign the nuclear deal before the run-up to the American elections got too hot. Then, along comes yet another straw. In faraway Bengal, the Congress decided that for the Rajya Sabha seat coming up for renewal there, they would concede to the communists’ request to back a local minority editor. This last-minute choice killed the hope of a possible tie-up with the fiery Mamata.

Did this translate into one more straw in the wind and that the Congress was not planning on an alliance with which it could hope to combat the communists on their home turf? It even undid the possibility that the communists had of a volunteer who could have created space and won votes from the Congress, had he been given the option of trying.

Clearly, the Congress, at least in Bengal, was having none of that. Some clung to this straw, and as is usual in Delhi, this featherweight factor was inevitably endowed with the unbearable load of bearing the thesis that the Congress was, therefore, unwilling to rock the boat at the Centre by doing anything like signing the nuclear deal.

Of course, the only reason why these clearly contradictory signals in straws matter at the moment is that everybody’s engrossed in figuring out when the next general elections will be called. A lot seems to hang on this.

Pundits are willing to postulate victory indications for the two large national coalitions, based on the timing of the elections, rather than anything to do with their popularity with the people at large. That is exactly how these things work within that loose lattice of straws that provides incendiary grist for the many mills that constantly grind away in the capital.

Warring over words

Four years ago, the Maharashtra government had clamped down on the book ‘Shivaji: Hindu King of Islamic India’ by US author James Laine after violent protests by those offended by portions in the book about the warrior king.

The Maharashtra government is keen to continue the ban, if only to keep the militant saffron brigade at bay.

The ‘Marathi manoos’ has become rather prickly of late, as Mumbai has witnessed these past few weeks. To foment that sentiment further would be a folly that the state government would not like to commit.

The government is keeping its fingers crossed that the issue does not mar Shivaji’s birthday next month.