We also, in the pure, unvarnished, spirit of inquiry, set up omissions for pure, unvarnished educative purposes. We set up omissions to discover, for instance, whether eminent historical personalities, born over a century ago, are still alive or whether they are, indeed, certifiably dead. We set up omissions to study the curious reason why the roads of Lithuania happen to be less potholed than those of Lucknow. And once we even set up a sitting omission, whose standing committee was required to discover whether it would be in the country’s interest to set up a joint fertiliser project in West Asia. This, by the way, involved extensive visits of Europe’s best-known tourist hotspots, but only the cynic would take this scrutiny into fertiliser manufacture as a load of dung. In actual fact, it was only further evidence of the incessant, unceasing, and tireless search for the truth which animates every pore of every member of every omission, big or small.

These omissions may appear to the untrained eye as exercises in obfuscation, prevarication, mystification. They most absolutely are not. Let me state, here and now, that every omission set up by this country is proof that it is deeply committed to taking immediate and effective action in order to counter malefic forces, correct untenable situations, set skewed records straight. We are, as a functioning democracy, always desirous of getting to the bottom of things. The point is those complex issues, which invariably call for sterling omissions to be set up as evidence of governmental concern, are by their very nature bottomless, and therefore the exercise to touch their bottoms necessarily demands unending and perpetual striving.

... contd.