Democracy, however, is not only a numbers game. Its heart and soul lie in how honestly and transparently political leaders relate to the people and conduct amongst themselves. One never expected the Congress president to show her allegiance to the higher values of democracy. However, going by the Prime Minister’s conduct in the past week, I must painfully record that he, too, believes democracy to be merely an arithmetic exercise in which the support of requisite number of MPs can be secured through private deals enforced through institutional molestation.

Dr Singh has lost his credibility also because of the indecent haste with which his government approached the IAEA before proving its majority in Parliament. In doing so, it even violated a public commitment made by the Foreign Minister, who claimed that he was making that commitment after telephonically speaking to the Prime Minister, who was then in Japan. Dr Singh’s haste has shown that he is more interested in meeting the deadlines set by the political process in America and more keen on fulfilling his commitment to George Bush than in behaving in a trustworthy manner with the people of India. “Deceitful” is too strong a word to be used in democratic discourse. But it’s quite a feat that Dr Singh’s government earned this epithet from both the BJP and the Left when it first suppressed the draft safeguards agreement with the IAEA by calling it a “classified document” and, after it appeared on American websites, embarrassedly made it public in India. The PM should know that lies and legitimacy cannot go together.

... contd.