India's 59th birthday I decided to skip the President’s Independence Day tea party for a rural reality check. Not because I am blase about invitations from Rashtrapati Bhawan—I only get invited once a year—but because political Delhi at the moment is a bore and at the President’s tea party the only conversations you are likely to have are about politics. Everyone has fixed positions, everyone takes sides on every issue so instead of conversation you get a harangue whether it is the right to information Bill, terrorism or the nuclear deal.

Frankly, I cannot understand why the denial of access to notes in files should be so crucial to our right to information. If you consider that to date more than 60 per cent of Indians who have exercised their right to information are government servants. My own view is that only educated Indians with the patience and wiles to deal with the bureaucracy will ever exercise this right.

On terrorism, lines are drawn in a frightening way. If you support Hindutva then you demand stupid things like ‘‘hot pursuit’’, and if you are ‘‘secular’’ then you do not discuss terrorism without expressing concern for the ‘‘minority community’’. Personally, I find arguments on the nuclear deal the most annoying because those who oppose it make India sound like a weak, spineless country.

So, I escaped Delhi by driving to the grubby, little village of Badod near Alwar. I chose this village for my rural reality check because I came here three years ago and found sewage water coming out of the village handpump.

... contd.