• Indees it is a thumping endorsement of citizens’ awareness that an MP could be ordered off the flight by the pilot for holding up departure and told that he had no business inconveniencing those who had paid for their tickets (‘Brute power won’t fly’). It is yet another case for the people to raise their collective voice for the abolition of parliamentary privileges when the MP at fault threatens to move a privilege motion in the House against the pilot. In Britain, from where the fathers of our Constitution borrowed the provision of parliamentary privileges, they were provided centuries ago to protect parliamentarians from royalist intervention while serving the public interest. In India, our honourable MPs and state legislators have made these privileges an instrument of bullying.

New deals

• The Africa summit should bring India closer to the African continent, and open new frontiers of economic cooperation. It will be unrealistic to expect that India will catch up with China’s lead in Africa any time soon. But a beginning in the right direction has been made and these regional initiatives are very relevant in the “post American era”, as Fareed Zakaria calls it. Another epoch-making development is going to take place with the commissioning of the Sittwe port in Myanmar’s waters which will enable the northeastern states of India to access the Bay of Bengal through the Kaldin river in Mizoram. This may end the land-locked status of the Northeast with the narrow chicken’s neck passage to the mainland. This port may even usher in a new era of prosperity for the entire region.

... contd.