Now, let us talk of the violence we saw in Maharashtra and the W. Bengal Assembly last week. Whatever the Dalit grievance, they have no right to express it by burning public property that has been paid for by the hard earned money of taxpayers.

It is primitive (and stupid) to burn trains and buses because they belong to us, and if you were in Mumbai last week, you would have seen that whatever sympathy the Dalits had after the horrible massacre in Khairlanji, they lost with last week’s vandalism.

Yet, what do you expect of ordinary people if MLAs of a national political party like the Trinamul Congress, think nothing of breaking tables and chairs in the legislative assembly in the full glare of nationwide television.

They did this because their leader, Mamata Bannerji, was allegedly denied permission to protest in the streets. If this is not primitive politics what is? Mobs are faceless, so the Dalit vandals who burned buses and the Deccan Queen will probably get away with what they did, but Ms Bannerji must be made to pay for the damage her MLAs did, and they should be locked up and the key thrown away till the next election.

We need a new kind of politics if we are to truly benefit from the enormous changes that economic liberalisation has brought. Personally, I am ready to vote for a party that offers to take us from 9.2 to 10 per cent growth next year.