With the debate over whether India should allow 51 per cent foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail over and the Opposition's resolution against this policy defeated in both Houses of Parliament, the Government has jubilantly declared that “reforms are back on track”. PM Manmohan Singh and his loudmouth colleagues, among them a boastful fool who has offered to grow potatoes which are 24 inches long (his words, not mine) for American firms, need to be reminded that the sudden enthusiasm to allow 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail has little or nothing to do with reforms.

Nor will it mean a flood of foreign direct investment that will wash away the Congress-led UPA government’s lassitude over economic issues for the past nine years. Indeed, opening our doors to Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour is as much a game-changer for our increasingly dreary lives as we rapidly slip back to the days of Congress-style socialism when coping with shortages and making the rupee stretch beyond hundred paise were the twin challenges of wage-earners, as was signing the India-US nuclear deal. India still awaits the promised ‘nuclear bijli’ without which, we were told, our collective future was doomed.