In good old days of gramophones, the most irritating moments came when you would put on an LP record without dusting it properly. As the pin got stuck in the dirt, you would hear the screeching sound as the line repeated itself, as if on the loop.

Shorn of much in way of own agenda – and loads of no-go zones amid its own ranks due to the NaMo factor — the BJP also sounds a bit like a torn record. Each time there’s a crisis in governance or any landmark moment, occasion or decision, you can close your eyes and see déjà vu unveil itself on news channels: Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, leaders of opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, addressing a press conference and charging Messrs Manmohan Singh and UPA government of being a rudderless leader and India’s most corrupt administration, respectively.

Like one suffering from chronic colic pain, the gripe never shifts.

Check the quotes from the presser on Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of UPA-II and the ninth overall: "UPA-II has seen more corruption than UPA-I. There have been mindboggling scams which were not seen by any previous government."

Swaraj, according to PTI, said such governments require "special leadership qualities". But the PM, she said, isn’t the man for that. "Manmohan Singh is the prime minister but neither a leader of the country nor the leader of his own party.”

Jaitley said, "UPA has devalued the prime minister's post. Singh's cabinet colleagues look towards UPA chairperson for policy directions and somewhere else for future leadership."

And on they went...

Looking at this, and hearing all that jazz, you would believe all the UPA has done is indulge in corruption in its nine years, and all the PM has done in the same number of years is do nothing. How about some other 'shortcomings' of the government in these same years?

• Lack of governance
• Betrayal of public trust
• Making a mess of coalition politics
• Promoting sycophants, and sycophancy
• An unusually high level of arrogance
• Diplomatic failure on all fronts
• Losing face internationally to the level that even Maldives doesn’t flinch from taking India for a ride
• Sitting over rising internal security threats
• Spawning so many messy decisions on education front
• Doing precious little to bring in regulators for much-needed real estate and education sectors
• Doing glib math to reduce the number of people below the poverty line (BPL) on record
• Trying to curb freedom of almost every constitutional authority and civil society movement
• And, above all, hankering for succour from a certain family even after all these years (hours before Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi were to release the UPA’s report card, union minister Kamal Nath told NDTV: Rahul Gandhi "now has all his 10 fingers in, he has served as vice-president and he should be projected as the prime ministerial candidate for the Congress party." Prime minister Manmohan Singh, he said, "has served his 10 years." 
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