Imagining UPA III

Since everyone and their grandmother would have analysed UPA II's first year in the course of this week, I have decided to enter the realm of fantasy mixed with reality and speculate about the possibility of a UPA III. If a UPA III does indeed crystallise (which seems likely right now given the state of the BJP) let me take the risk of speculating abut the personalities and equations that could dominate it. You could call this entire piece an exercise in magic realism:

If we go by the Congress rhetoric than Rahul Gandhi is the future PM. By 2014, let’s imagine him as PM. He would be 44 years old and it would be a very carefully orchestrated project with Sonia Gandhi keeping an eye on everything without any direct responsibility. Is there a possibility that we (the media) will be accusing him of surrounding himself with babalog, just as father Rajiv was accused of doing?
Digvijay Singh had pledged to work in party organistion for a decade after losing the Madhya Pradesh elections in 2003. The period of banvas will end a year after the UP assembly elections of 2012 and a year before the Lok Sabha polls. If the Congress stages a comeback in UP it is certain that Diggy Raja will get a big cabinet post in a Rahul dispensation. There was once a belief that panchayati raj and rural development would be his preferences but now, off the record, Congress leaders say he would like to be home minister. Now imagine that -- Diggy Raja, the home minister!
Pranab Mukherjee is the man who missed being PM. It is said that when Pratibha Patil’s term ends in 2012 he would like the UPA to back him as the next president of India. Manmohan Singh’s name also does the round as a presidential hopeful but in 2012 he would still have two years to go as PM. After a decade in that office, he may just retire or work out some arrangement as an avuncular figure helping out Rahul Gandhi perhaps?
P. Chidambaram would be the senior most minister as Pranab would be in Rashtrapati Bhawan and Manmohan Singh retired/reinvented. Since he would have failed to solve the Maoist problem by then he could perhaps again be asked to take care of managing the economy as finance minister.
Sonia Gandhi will still be acting as the social conscience of the government, keeping one eye on son while the low key Ahmed Patel runs the party.
Shashi Tharoor, married to Sunanda Pushkar, will become president of the tweeting society of the world
Jairam Ramesh will be reborn as an environmentalist leader of India

In the fitness of things, why should we confine ourselves just to the Congress. Here's looking at some of the other players:

BJP

Having completed his term as BJP president Nitin Gadkari would have fainted away singing a sad song.
Narendra Modi would have won another term as CM in 2012 but will still be living down the shadow of the Gujarat riots and facing investigations.
Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley will be the faces projected for the national campaign of 2014. They'll still be trying to trip up each other.
RSS will be running the show in 2014 and hunting for another faceless wonder to fix the party.

Left

In 2011 the Left will possibly lose power in both Kerala and West Bengal. It would be a terrible year for them. But by 2014, anti-incumbency against Mamta Banerjee’s government in West Bengal will be so intense that they will get some Lok Sabha seats from the state. If the UPA numbers don’t add up the comrades would like to again play a decisive in forming UPA III

States/Allies

Mamta Banerjee as CM of West Bengal will be facing huge anti-incumbency by 2014.
Nitish Kumar would have dumped the BJP by then.
Jharkhand will still be hunting for a CM who will survive more than a few months.
AP will get sick of Congress infighting by 2014 when assembly elections are due and vote in the opposition.
Mayawati will hand on to power in UP with diminished numbers in 2012 and if by some chance the Congress has dislodged her than there will indeed be a UPA III.
Laloo and Mulayam will be on the ascendant in their states and will be carefully analysing the caste census to reinvent the Mandal card.
By then the women's reservation bill would have been passed in some form or the other and we scribes will be busy trying to get to know women MPs. Men will be sulking.
Karunanidhi will still be managing his feuding children as he approaches his 90s.
Raj Thackeray will become the "real" Shiv Sena and will still be competing with cousin Udhav in who can manage a bigger goonda force.
NCP’s Praful Patel (Union civil aviation minister) will have bought a private airline by 2014 for his daughter Poorna to commandeer aircraft at will.
His party boss Sharad Pawar (agriculture minister) will still be trying to manipulate sale and purchase of IPL teams as opposed to managing agricultural prices. He and his expanding political clan will still win from their bastion in Maharashtra inspite of spiralling farmers suicide in the state.