Last week, as skeletons continued to tumble out of the cupboard of the UPA’s presidential candidate, a few young activists of a non-political organisation called the Bharat Uday Mission met me and made a comment that is not going to be easily erased from my mind. “We, the youth of India, feel cheated by the political establishment,” they said. Perplexed, I asked, “What do you mean?” Their answer is representative of the disappointment felt by a majority of the educated Indian youth. “We were expecting,” they said, “that all the political parties would evolve a consensus around a second term for Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who has won the hearts of young people. Not only did this not happen, but our country now looks set to have as its next president a person of highly questionable antecedents. What kind of guidance or inspiration can young people like us receive from Rashtrapati Bhavan for the next five years if Pratibha Patil becomes its occupant? This is why we feel cheated.”

I was similarly jolted by another conversation last week. Two bright girls from Bangalore, both studying law and doing summer internship in Delhi, met me at a friend’s place. They had been closely following media reports on the alleged illegalities of Pratibha Patil and her various institutions — the bank that went bust, the sugar factory that defaulted on loan repayment and had to be sealed, the trust that siphoned off money from its own educational institutions, a government-supported working women’s hostel that rented out space to commercial entities, the diversion of MP’s local area development funds to a family-controlled trust, the murder case, the suicide case . . . the list is growing by the day. “Is it impossible,” the girls asked me, “to bring about a change for the better in India? Why do unscrupulous people triumph in our country? We have grown up believing that young people should be idealistic and work for a better India. Are we naïve in our belief?”

... contd.