The White House staffers charged with transcribing the every public utterance of U.S. President George W. Bush and his friends do not have an easy job. If they falter even for a moment in the constant war against tape hiss, mumbling and ill-timed coughs, they risk putting the wrong words in some of the most powerful mouths on the planet.

And so, as I read today’s official transcript of remarks made by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G8 Summit in Japan, I wondered if the transcriber forgot to take a cotton swab to their ear that morning:

PRIME MINISTER SINGH: Mr. President, it is a great opportunity for me to once again meet you and to review with you the state of Hindu-American relations. (Emphasis added.)

Surely some mistake? (UPDATE 5.25pm: The White House has now corrected the transcript on its website, but the original version can still be seen here and here.)

Singh is known to be a soft-spoken man, but he is very clear on at least one point: his Congress Party, which heads India’s coalition government, is intended to be a secular party, embracing equally the 230 million Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews, animists, agnostics and atheists that live alongside India’s 900 million Hindus. (Besides which, Singh himself is a Sikh.) A vote for Congress, so its leaders say, is a vote against what are darkly called “the forces of communalism” — a thinly veiled reference to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s main opposition, which believes Indians of every creed should revere and live by the wisdom of the Vedas and other ancient Hindu texts.

For once, the BJP might be delighted to read over Singh’s remarks, but he actually said “Indo-American” relations, according to Sanjaya Baru, Singh’s spokesman. (”An amusing mistake,” Baru said with a chuckle, adding that they were seeking to get the transcript corrected.)

So have the “forces of communalism” reached even as far as the White House? Or is this just another example of the confusion some non-Indians have grasping the differences between “Hindu”, “Hindi” and “Indian”?

India’s 80-year-old opposition leader says he needs help on “money matters”.

Not only does his wife pay all the bills at home, but he asked business leaders on Tuesday for help in drawing up a new economic model which does not ape the West.

He also had some strong words for the Congress-led government, accusing it of failing to control inflation and failing to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

When Advani’s own coalition government was in power, it followed pretty similar policies, except with more emphasis on privatisation of state-run companies. But it lost power partly for claiming that India was shining, when poverty was still rampant.

So it’s fair enough to look for economically sustainable ideas to help India’s poor, in fact it is probably essential to address widespread poverty more aggressively.

But is Advani being realistic to suggest there is an alternative to a “Western” development model in the modern world?

And is it right that a man who could be India’s next prime minister so blithely admits to not really understanding economics or money matters?

Is the sun setting on the Congress-led UPA government? India’s opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is certainly riding high after victory in the southern state of Karnataka at the weekend , giving it a first chance to run a government in the south.And it’s the latest in a long losing streak for Congress in state elections. The question is whether the ruling party can turn things around.

The economy certainly isn’t helping. Rising inflation seems to have already wiped out whatever electoral benefits the farmers’ debt waiver might have brought. A slowdown in growth, already apparent in industrial production statistics, won’t help either.

So the first problem for the government is to bring down inflation in time for next year’s national polls.

For now, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is sounding optimistic, and a favourable monsoon would certainly help. But there is little relief on the horizon from global oil prices, and the government may soon have to bite the bullet and raise domestic fuel prices again.

Reining in inflation will be tough, but not impossible over the next year.

On the political front, all the momentum is with the BJP.

At times, Congress looks disorganised and rudderless. In several elections, Congress seems to have paid the price of failing to nominate a candidate for the chief minister’s job, and relying too much on the pull of the Gandhi family.

At the very top, many analysts are asking if the prime minister has provided the kind of strong leadership his country needs.

But a week is famously a long time in politics, let alone a year. State election defeats don’t bring down governments. It is how the parties react to these mid-term verdicts that can make a real difference.

And it is here that Congress has its chance. The BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh go to the polls this year, and if voters turf out the incumbents in all three, the BJP could indeed lose some of its shine.

Let’s not forget that only a year ago the BJP was beset by infighting and divided over what its electoral USP was — development or Hindutva. The ageing L.K. Advani does not always strike the right chord with voters across the country, and it is far from clear Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will emerge as a politician who can garner national support.

I have yet to see a national opinion poll which predicts a clear win for the BJP and its allies. The UPA is losing ground, but the BJP still has a lot of work to do to regain the top spot.