ABSTRACT
The 2009 general election was an emphatic endorsement of the Congress party, which, under the guiding hand of Sonia Gandhi, had regained its original pluralist and inclusive view of India. The Congress became amply aware of its debilitated condition when Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj party (BSP) and the Left front withdrew support to the government in a 2008 no-confidence motion over the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the Congress, to retain office, had to stoop to woo the Samajwadi party (SP) for its votes. Congress government enacted the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which guaranteed at least 100 days of wage employment in a year to every household that had no other source of income in that year. Taking the measure of the government's accomplishments during Manmohan Singh's second term of office takes us over the boundary of political history and into current events.
