Political power, Mao Zedong said, flows from the barrel of a gun. Perhaps. In India, however, it seems to be generated in coal-fired power plants. Last week, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee dedicated (officialese for inauguration) to the nation the 1,000 MW Simhadri Thermal Power Station of the National Power Thermal Corporation (NTPC) in Visakhapatnam. The full-page ads and TV footage that preceded the "dedication" were obviously tuned by Union Power Minister Anant Geete to electrify the electorate. In power-starved India it would have. Except that the Simhadri power plant with its 165-m cooling tower has been operational since August 2002. The NTPC in its 2002-3 report attributes 4,972 million units of its total production to Simhadri. But then such niceties have no place in poll season.

KATRA, UP Vajpayee waves the flag before boarding a Katra-Ayodhya train on February 7. Dedicates to the country a bridge and railroad service.	BHUJ, GUJARAT The prime minister interacts with patients after inaugurating a general hospital in Bhuj on January 14.

This clearly is no time for skinflints or those weak-hearted quibblers. Last month saw the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity-the ubiquitous DAVP call sign that marks the sarkari ad-going into overdrive. Unlike the "India Shining" ads which are budgeted for and paid from the Rs 100 crore allocated to the India Development Initiative, there is no known figure either of the volume or the value of ads being released. Obviously, no newspaper is or will be left out lest they remember it during the campaign. There has hardly been a day when the Government has not sung paeans to its feats.

DEHRADUN, UTTARANCHAL Vajpayee unveils the Info-Tech Institute for the Tribes of India at Dehradun on January 28.	RANCHI, JHARKHAND Prime minister announces the creation of Regional Institute of Medical Science on February 1.

Since the day he announced "chunav aa rahe hain" at Secunderabad Vajpayee has logged over 17,000 km on a ceaseless ribbon-cutting parade-it is proof enough of the rush. Not just him. Last week, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani visited Gujarat and had 14 photo-ops in a single day. So did other ministers. Labour Minister Sahib Singh Verma launched social security schemes for workers of the unorganised sector, Health Minister Sushma Swaraj delivered a double punch with a nationwide programme, Vande Mataram, to promote safe motherhood and Railways Minister Nitish Kumar announced the world's first collision-free rail route by December 2004 and dedicated new bridges and trains to the nation.

VAISHALI, BIHAR Nitish Kumar presents Vajpayee with a model of the Kosi river railway bridge on February 10.	DELHI Sahib Singh Verma lays the foundation stone of a referral unit hospital on February 1.

Almost every day in the past month, some ministry or the other has announced a new proposal. Or inaugurated new or mostly existing projects. On January 22, Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated a pilot project on the Farm Income Insurance Scheme. The initiative offers subsidy on premia paid-75 per cent to marginal farmers and 50 per cent to others-on insurance. This laudable project has already been implemented in 20 districts across 13 states during the crop season of 2003-4. But obviously it had not been inaugurated.

DELHI Vajpayee launches National Kisan Call Centre scheme on January 20.	RANCHI, JHARKHAND Vajpayee inaugurates a road constructed at Bodaia panchayat on February 1.

Bollywood icon and Shipping Minister Shatrughan Sinha produced the googly of the season. On January 31, he transformed the Ennore coal port in Tamil Nadu to an energy port by inaugurating the administrative building, the signal tower, the water supply scheme to the port complex and laying a foundation stone for the creation of a temporary facility for export of iron ore. How Ennore is now an energy port is yet a mystery.

KANYAKUMARI, TAMIL NADU He lays the foundation for the four-laning of Kanyakumari to Panagudi road on February 2.	DELHI Vajpayee at the inaugural ceremony of new power plants in Delhi on February 9.

To be fair, in many cases the ministers simply used the opportunity to gain face value by hyping even routine policy decisions. Like Textile Minister Syed Shahnawaz Husain who chose to air a Rs 100 crore subsidy reimbursement to state governments. Some have also created the opportunity. Coal Minister Mamata Banerjee managed to convince a PSU in less than a month to fund a multi-superspecialty hospital in Kolkata.

It isn't just the Central ministries that are in a rush to spin doctor their failures into successes. In Orissa, the opposition parties have in a joint statement condemned "the foundation stone-laying spree" by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. In Bangalore Chief Minister S.M. Krishna inaugurated the annexe building of Vidhana Soudha, four months before its completion.

But the best story as always comes from Bihar. Last week RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav charged the NDA ministers with trying to "befool" the people with announcements that will remain only on paper. That didn't stop Chief Minister Rabri Devi from announcing more than a hundred big and small projects in the past month. Despite a fiscal deficit of 10.2 per cent the Bihar Government has announced a Rs 1,162 crore spend towards self-sufficiency in power to deliver electricity to every village by 2007 and every home by 2012. As of today undivided Bihar has over 19,000 villages without electric connections-the highest in the country.

Clearly, not every promise can be taken seriously but there is a need for restraint for the promise parade to be credible. Promises do form the basis of pork barrel politics but political parties must remember that the law of diminishing returns is as valid for political business cycles as it is for economic cycles.

-with bureau reports