Srinagar, Nov. 7 -- A government that wins a mandate inherits two clocks. One measures political promises. The other measures public patience. Recent meetings between the ruling party's leadership and its legislators suggest that the second clock is moving faster than the first. The issue is not whether the party remains united. The issue is why elected representatives felt the need for repeated interventions before their concerns reached the centre of decision-making.

Those interventions came despite a cabinet expansion and reshuffle that was expected to recalibrate the government's political and administrative balance. Yet the conversations that followed indicate that changing faces and portfolios was only part of the answer. The large...