Sau din sauce kaySau din sauce kay

Readers of a certain vintage would recall a ghastly Bollywood film produced in 1980 called Sau Din Saas Kay which had Reena Roy as the rebel daughterinlaw and Lalita Pawar as the archetypal vicious motherinlaw This film was loud and melodramatic but it was a huge hit because suddenly tables had turned The daughterinlaw had changed the equation in the Hindu undivided family Somehow a 100 days is supposed to make a difference The lsquonicersquo period ends Everybody is open to critical analysis at the end of a hundred days So here goes the saucy tale of a hundred daysThe PM seems to be managing the relationship with the RSS ensuring that the development agenda supersedes everything else The thumping majority that the NDA has been given is a green flag but not a carte blanche PicPTIItrsquos different Again like Maggi sauce ketchup for the posh we have a government that is completely different Nothing they do is what we have become accustomed to in the past ten years The prime minister tweets grins meets Bollywood actors cracks jokes talks about toilets from the Red Fort Yes top down everything is differentFrenetic activity The lethargy is gone Government officials are working Industry is picking up pace You would have to be blind not to notice it Whether some are working due to fear or hope the point is things are moving Whether on reducing red tape cracking down on defaulters starting programmes like Jan Dhan Yojana therersquos something happening almost every day The CEOs are cheering According to one poll in the first 100 days 74 per cent of CEOs have noticed that demand has pickedup and 80 per cent of them have made new investment decisions Trickle down happiness to the peon in the office Maybe Whether the economy is on an upward trajectory is something the next 100 days will showDisha Direction Who is setting the goals and the mapping for achieving those Some say itrsquos the RSS and others say it is the Prime Ministerrsquos Office and the fact that the Prime Minister is steeped in RSS traditions means that there is not much difference So far the Prime Minister seems to be managing the relationship ensuring that the development agenda supersedes everything else The thumping majority that the NDA has been given is a green flag but not a carte blanche Mistaking one for the other is a pitfall many experienced leaders have madePalless intrigue By now Mr Modi would have realised that it is rare for a prime minister to have a genuine friend in Delhi He hinted as much the other day when in his Red Fort address he talked about ldquomujhe kya and mera kyardquo Actually his predecessor also did not have many friends He was quite alone Quite like another Prime Minister V P Singh And even Narasimha Rao Oh well lets add Morarji Desai to that list They barely had chamchas either But palace intrigue has gone on in the Capital despite the lifestyle of grand isolation practiced by prime ministers of past and presentSleepless in Lutyens And because there is palace intrigue there are long nights of insecurity and longer days of careless whispers The new Cabinet displayed signs of great joy in the first half of hundred days but in the second half is showing typical signs of nervousness They are under scrutiny from their boss who wants results yesterday and from their constituents who were promised achche din pronto They have to ensure that they meet the goals set for them and with the staff picked for them It is a discipline they are not accustomed to It is seva without mewa to distributeAlHind In the first 100 days there is more talk of Hindutva Satyam Shivam Sundaram lovejihad chaijihad burqinibikini YaleSanskritHindi etc than one can recall Good good What defines an Indian is an unending debate that has gone on for centuries More debate can only be good Jawjaw is better than talwartrishoolMandalkamandal The combination and combustion of these two is never leaving it appears The general election was supposed to have been about new models of development replacing a moribund setup But the results showed that people had not exactly voted around that agenda The byelection in the first 100 days reinforced that mandalkamandal politics is a fallback option that works Even in the 21st centuryZiddi padosan The NDA is resetting how India operates in the neighbourhood Very interesting policy initiatives have been introduced in the first 100 days Its almost as if the PM is playing with a Rubikrsquos cube Oh but with one neighbour one can really not do much Just wait for it to get its own act together Itrsquos been six decades of wait Whatrsquos a hundred daysSmita Prakash is Editor News at Asian News International You can follow her on twitter smitaprakash