As the UPA government completes three years in office on May 22 and prepares itself for the 2009 general elections, the continuing price rise of essential commodities and tough political times ahead would be the two major worries it would be bogged down with.
Unlike the last year when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi had overseen the release of a performance report of the government, called “Report to the People”, this year’s celebrations are slated to be much more muted.
Apart from a dinner to be hosted for the UPA MPs by the prime minister, no other celebrations are scheduled to mark the day.
While the government has time and again pointed out the booming economy to underscore its performance, many within the party feel the need to refocus its growth outlook on the aam aadmi.
It was, in fact, not surprising for political analysts to find that just two days before the anniversary, Panchayati Raj and Sports & Youth Affairs Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer made a comment on the need for the government to work more for the benefit of the common man instead of just the elite.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi, addressing a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party last week, in fact, stressed that the government would have to “consolidate” on the work it had done in the last three years.
The year gone by has not been a rosy one for the government, to say the least. First, it was besieged with the controversy over the SEZ issue, even forcing Ms Gandhi to ask it to go forward, keeping in mind the interests of farmers and the common man.
The violence at Nandigram and Singur in West Bengal  and the Posco Steel factory land acquisition issue in Orissa, Congress sources said, were pointers to how carefully the government would have to move while balancing developmental issues and the interests of the common man.
As the government moves to the fourth year in office, these worries could get compounded as the ruling combine is not expected to achieve much in the next rounds of Assembly elections, including in states like Gujarat and Delhi.
What will be particularly worrying for the government in the coming year, according to the Congress sources, would be an increasing attack on it from the Left parties.
The Left parties are already increasing their noise over various developmental and socio-political issues, asking the government to go in for a mid-course correction, a view that is shared by Congress men like Aiyer.