Opinions and Editorials

Okay, okay, I know Independence Day isn't for another 17 days, but I can't help myself. The only songs I've been able to sing since last Tuesday are rousing patriotic songs. True, no one appreciates the irony of the words Hum bulbulein hain is ki better than I do when I burst into Saare Jahan Se Achcha.

The forthcoming 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) Summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is crucial not only because of the terrorist violence that continues to pummel South Asia today, but also to decide on the fate of the Saarc Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism signed in 1987.

How closely should a party associate with the government it supports? This has been a long-debated question within the Left parties. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's expulsion from the CPI(M), following his refusal to step down, could end the debate in favour of leaders who are isolationists.

India has been talking tough at the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) pow-wow last week in Geneva that deals with trading rules between nations.

Show ME an anally retentive, convoluted Sunday column that starts with the old 'Show me a... and I'll show you' rhetorical trick and I'll show you a Prime Minister who sacrificed his personal integrity to push through what he believes to be something 'right' in the larger scheme of things.

IT WAS A casual question during a phone call from Paris but, last week, it hit the nail straight on the head. Perhaps, distance has given Pertie a perspective the hurly-burly has denied the rest of us. Or, maybe there are many others who share the same thought but Pertie is the first I've heard express it.

IT STARTED out as a vote to justify a moral stand. It ended up as the bonfire of parliamentary political morality. How long will it be before Indians can live down the spectacle of MPs brandishing wads of cash on the floor of the Lok Sabha? Those pictures, beamed all over the globe, have shamed the world's largest democracy.

Trust (n., v.): Unquestioning, fragile faith. As in the theme of 80s police sitcom Sledge Hammer, uttered by the violent, incompetent, screwed-up Detective Hammer moments before he fires his Magnum into the TV screen, shattering it: 'Trust me, I know what I'm doing!'

Now that the political orchestra has hit a noisy but compelling crescendo, and the high notes are beginning to give way to well-rehearsed and oft-sung songs, it's time to step back and ask ourselves which tune was humming in our head when we left the hall.

Not too long ago, I had christened the Left as the National Bureau of Moral Certification. Tuesday's trust vote has had one single salutary outcome: this malefic bureau stands dissolved. Coupled with the CPI(M)'s expulsion of Somnath Chatterjee from the party, the Left has exposed itself for what it is.

India's first trust vote in the age of 24-hour news television transformed parliamentary debate into a reality show. The politicians were the star performers while the nation played judge and audience. The drama in Parliament was hilarious and tragic by turn. Lakhs of rupees were suddenly unveiled and scattered on the Speaker's table inside the Lok Sabha.

Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee doesn't suffer fools; and he is not a lawyer. So he speaks with a straightness, without having to twist words to represent a point. And as Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, he packs a lot of experience in office.

'I get beaten up regularly, you will learn to adjust too,' her to-be mother-in-law told her. Luckily she didn't take that parental advice and walked out a week before her marriage. She was 23. Another was not as lucky and grew to be very scared of the night, that's when her husband came back from work. She was 18.

There is no doubt that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's triumph in the trust vote and the political drama that surrounded it will have far-reaching implications. They go well beyond who won or lost the numbers' game and whether TV images of currency-waving MPs have tarred the image of Indian democracy.

Water seeks its own level. Was what we saw yesterday some two hours before Parliament was reconvened in the evening really a bolt from the blue? The question, of course, is what did we see?

Tuesday's trust vote was not merely about who governs the nation for how long, but also about tackling something much larger: a daily cash flow that's gone awry ever since the inflation rate climbed to 11.91 per cent, double of what it was less than four months ago.

In India, like in any other constitutional democracy, the Constitution is supreme. The President, Vice President, Executive, Legislature, Judiciary and even States in the Union of India, and their organs, are the creatures of the Constitution. And those who man these offices have taken the oath to adhere to it in the discharge of their functions in the service of the people of this country.

The country is agog with excitement, with everyone glued to the TV, watching politicians making speeches invoking the nation's interest. But if there is anything that will be sold at a near 100 per cent discount today, it will be the nation's interest. Indeed the discount rate will be the reverse image of the price of their vote.

George Bush is upset with China and Russia for vetoing sanctions against Zimbabwe in the United Nations. Well, that's hardly likely to send a shiver down the spine of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.

The pressure put on Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee by the CPI(M) to resign, so that he may vote as an MP with the CPI(M) in the crucial vote of confidence against the UPA government, violates all parliamentary conventions and traditions relating to the Speaker.