The Left parties have already sounded warning bells on any further negotiation on the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Agreement; a large section of the UPA has walked out of the alliance alleging that the Congress had reneged on its commitment to a separate state of Telengana; and as the UPA lurches into its fourth year, leaving just about 12 months for the next general elections, ruling coalition members are asking themselves what they've won and what they've lost in four years.
The current obsession is the rise in prices and the next Lok Sabha elections will be tough if the Government fails to rein in inflation, warn allies and partners who feel that rising prices could be the "death warrant".
Vijay Krishna, General Secretary of the RJD, said the UPA had done a lot of remarkable work including farm loan waiver but "if the dangerous trend of rising prices is not stopped, it will be a death warrant for the UPA".Krishna offered gratuitous advice to the government: that it should replace P Chidambaram as Finance Minister and appoint a new one.
Krishna said the Government had got "trapped" on issues of the nuclear deal and the women's reservation bill.
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Mohan Singh, senior leader of the Samajwadi Party, which withdrew support to the coalition last year but does not deny reports of a new alliance in Uttar Pradesh, is not optimistic about the prospects of the UPA and claims "its days are numbered".
But the Congress diagnoses its problems differently. It says coalition has never been an option, but a compulsion for the party.
"Coalition is never an option. Coalition is compulsion not only for Congress but for everybody," said party General Secretary Janardhan Dwivedi.
While there has been criticism that the Left parties, the key outside supporters, have been playing big brother, senior Congress leader Ram Niwas Mirdha felt the "so called veto of the Left has been unnecessarily played up".
While Congress says that the drawbacks of coalition are "always political", Dwivedi says that coalitions always benefit smaller parties.
Meanwhile, the RJD felt that the grand old party should observe coalition dharma, recognsing that the Government at the Centre was not of Congress, but of UPA.
Leaders from the NCP like D P Tripathi have always said that Congress should not treat UPA as its "fiefdom".
Mohan Singh had uncharitable words about the leadership of the Prime Minister. He described cabinet meetings being held in an "atmosphere of anarchy" with Ministers seeking to undermine the prime minister. "It is not a happy augury for the coalition that none of the constituents of the UPA want to face the next elections under the leadership of the Prime Minister," he said.
The chorus of "Rahul Gandhi for PM" is nothing but a display of no confidence in Manmohan Singh.
Minister of state for Home, Shakil Ahmed, however, said the government's greatest victory was secularism.
"There may be some other partners supporting us who believe in secularism . We are having discussions and a decision will be taken jointly after consulting all UPA parties," he said.