The question I get asked most by visiting foreigners and on my travels in foreign lands is: what could go wrong in India? It usually gets asked like this. The economy is booming, foreign direct investment has gone up dramatically to $10 billion last year, the stock market has shot up beyond the expectations of anyone, so what is the downside? What could go wrong? My answer, sadly, is that we must never underestimate the ability of our politicians to mess things up. The word I use in my verbal answer is the ‘‘F...’’ one which, naturally, I desist from using in a family newspaper.

Currently, we have several examples of just how good the Indian politician is at taking us down just when things are beginning to look good. In Delhi we witnessed last week the extraordinary spectacle of medical students being teargassed and drenched with water cannons because they sought an appointment with Shri Arjun Singh. Was he scared to meet them because in his evil, little heart even he knows that the quotas he proposes for other backward castes are wrong? Does he have no answers because he knows that castes that may have been backward in the late Seventies when Mr B P Mandal made his report are not backward any more? Is he afraid to meet medical students in case they ask if he would be willing to subject himself to the ministrations of a doctor who may have passed his medical examinations only because he was low of caste?

... contd.