As a veteran political columnist I am often asked why I am so mean about politicians. Strangers at airports sometimes connect me with the mug shot you see in this column and approach with gratuitous advice that mostly takes the form of questions. Why do you constantly attack Sonia Gandhi? Why do you never see anything good in the BJP? Why are you so anti-Indian?

This last question is the only one I sometimes respond to by explaining patiently to whoever asks that being against the government or some political personality or party is not the same as being anti-India. This usually puzzles them because in the chippy, socialist ideology on which most of us were bred, we were accustomed to thinking of our leaders as India. As a consequence of this pitiable adulation, we allowed them to make mistakes for which we paid heavily.

These mistakes caused India to miss the bus time and time again. We failed to do what, to use the prime minister’s words, was ‘manifestly obvious’. When China slyly dumped Communism for capitalism in the late seventies, we tightened the license-quota-permit raj. When East Asia followed China’s example and invited India to join ASEAN, we rejected their hand of friendship. When the Cold War ended with the disintegration of our best friend, the Soviet Union, we continued to cling to the idea of non-alignment. From whom, we never asked. And, now when it is ‘manifestly obvious’ that if we miss the bus on the nuclear deal the Americans offer us, we could miss it for good, we are ready to miss it.

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