Is the Union government handicapped by the absence of a senior minister with state-level government experience as chief minister to help the prime minister manage law and order problems? According to one senior politician, neither Foreign Minister S M Krishna (former Karnataka CM) nor Defence Minister A K Anthony (former Kerala CM) have really any good ground-level administrative experience. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram and other firefighters like Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid and Ambika Soni having no state government experience, and Sharad Pawar marginalised, no one in Delhi quite knows how to respond to political challenges like the one posed by the likes of a district-level activist like Anna Hazare!
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