Is this government now so distracted by inflation, the oil price mess and electoral defeat in Karnataka that it has failed to grab a plum PR moment?

Right through the past year we were primed up for the good news that was to be confirmed at the end of 2007-08: India would be a trillion-dollar economy. Well, on Friday the national statistics office did release its revised estimates on the economy for the year gone by. National income at current prices was Rs43,03,654 crore. The rupee traded at 39.89 to a dollar on the last day of the previous fiscal year. Divide the two—the national income at current prices and the exchange rate on 31 March—and you get a trillion-dollar economy.

This is not an opportunity that politicians and spin doctors would have passed by in normal times. It would have been held up as an achievement. This is not meant as a criticism of the current group in power. Any political group will try to capitalize on it. That this government has been silent on this milestone tells us a lot about its state of mind.