Executing a joke

At the same function last week at which Finance Minister P Chidambaram admitted the United Progressive Alliance may have misread the verdict of 2009, another Union minister also made an admission that the Congress might be on the way out, after failing to see that people want more from the state than welfare schemes. But Corporate Affairs Minister Sachin Pilot also embedded a joke into his admission. "We are moving towards an execution-based government," he said. "Let's hope in a good way." As a subtle reference to the fake encounter scandals in Narendra Modi's Gujarat, it was a good joke - but either too subtle or too politically sharp for the audience. Nobody laughed.