The Railway and Union Budgets were swiftly forgotten when the events in West Asia and North Africa took a violent turn. After a deceptively calm regime change in Tunisia and Egypt and movements towards freedom and democracy across the entire region, we are witnessing a bloody civil war in Libya.

Crude oil prices climbed to a 29-month high, settling at more than $100 for the first time since September 2008 as fighting near key oil ports in Libya fuelled anxiety that instability there could be prolonged and might inspire unrest in other oil-exporting nations.
Regime change is never easy and, besides the price of oil, the economies in West Asia and North Africa will also be affected.
The sermon given by Col. Muammar Gaddafi was unimpressive. It must be extremely difficult for independent observers to keep awake during his speech, which was managed for the international audience. Civil war rages in Libya and the UN Security Council battles the crisis with strictures and sermons, freezing assets of the dictator, his family and his associates.
But all this is unlikely to frighten Col. Gaddafi. While few would support the “excesses” being committed, there are many in the region who will threaten to use similar methods to silence protests and dissent. Oil politics on a global scale might prevail over the aspirations of the people. This could well lead to fundamentalism in the future as we witness both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Practical politics is about realising when to call it a day. If you pick any book on the 100 great leaders of the past 50 years you will find that the majority of them committed fatal errors during the last years in office. Often, they did not know when to retire and pass the baton to the next generation.

LIFE MUST go on. We have a major diversion as the cricket World Cup continues to surprise us with superlative performances.
Just when we were praising England for putting up a daughty fight against India, the team was humbled by Ireland. Irish batsman Kevin O’Brien scored a century in 50 balls. We have a very interesting week ahead of us.
Clearly, no one can name a single team that will emerge as winner as every side has a match-winner or two who can snatch the match away within a few overs. India will be the sentimental favourites, but look at South Africa, Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka, West Indies and England. But we can’t ignore Ireland or Holland either. Every game has a surprise in store.
Also, we have the Indian Premier League. Look at the talent available to all IPL teams. The tournament is only going to get bigger. Ten years ago who would have thought that India would become the centre of attention and every cricket superstar of the past and the present would grace our cricket stadiums.

IN POLITICS, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Assam and Kerala are gearing up for Assembly elections. The Election Commission deserves applause as it prevented the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) from distributing free colour television sets to the voters at our expense.
The aam aadmi is spoken of as a political necessity, but now the electronic media is making this a reality check for our leaders. The media, as the watchdog of society, has literally forced the politicians to practise what they often preach.
Recently, I watched the family members of the sailors held captive by the Somali pirates fighting for the lives of their loved ones. They forced the entire political establishment to take a stand. Now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and defence minister A.K. Antony must intervene.
Political leaders should learn to keep their cool; throwing tantrums is unwise. While the likely solutions cannot be discussed on TV, the exposure was necessary to spur an unresponsive government into action.
The media performed a miracle as the murder cases of model Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Mattoo and Nitish Katara were revived. Slowly, the exception has become the rule as almost every news channel highlights issues that the government cannot afford to ignore.
Also, recently, the district collector and junior engineer in Malkangiri were kidnapped by Naxalites.
Here, the government acted wisely — in these crises situations those in governance cannot ignore the emotive factor.
We have often talked of leadership skills. In a coalition system of governance, the era of charismatic supreme leaders is gone. It is a number game and portfolios are distributed with the relative strength of the ally. The 2G scam is the direct product of this system.
The system is very different in the states. Regional parties cannot win unless they have a charismatic leader. Those who display skills both in “thought and action” are often unbeatable and we see this in Sheila Dikshit, Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh and Naveen Patnaik.
I sometimes wonder whether accountability levels will force a similar situation at the Centre. In politics, the generation change that we often talk about has already arrived.

Arun Nehru is a former Union minister