Credibility has passed - from the political class to professionals and entrepreneurs. This is what the immense impact that the scientists have had this time round brings out dramatically. In a word, professionals should exercise the authority that has fallen to them, and speak up on issues that are their specialty. When they neglect to do so, they fail the country.

The nuclear issue has been exceptional in another respect also, and in that it holds a lesson for the media, at least for some in the media. This is one of the very, very few issues on which, and after a long time, well-reasoned, well-documented arguments have been carried by the print media - arguments both pro and con.

But some at least in the media must have been embarrassed by what the prime minister has now said. For on every particular, his statement was an acknowledgment that the apprehensions which have been expressed were valid about the direction in which Americans were taking our Government. Were some of our papers and reporters to look back on how much trust they placed on “backgrounders” and “briefings”, they would squirm. They were used to insinuate constructions which the prime minister has himself decisively put down.

Look at the benign interpretations they read into the House and Senate Bills and what the prime minister has now acknowledged about the real import of their provisions. Look at the way they greeted the “overwhelming vote” by which the Bill passed the US House of Representatives, and how the margin was projected as a victory — not just of the Bush Administration, but also of Indian diplomacy – when the overwhelming margin simply reflected the fact that, so many new conditions having been added to the Bill, the overwhelming proportion of legislators felt it would now overwhelmingly advance US’ objectives, and sink our autonomy.

... contd.