What will it take for India to go the Bangladesh way or the way of Pakistan? Look at what is happening in our neighbourhood. In Bangla-desh, parliamentary elections have been indefinitely postponed. A quasi-military authority has taken over. It wanted to send the two sparring former prime ministers — Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia — into exile. The plan didn’t succeed only due to intense domestic and international outcry. Nevertheless, Sheikh Hasina has been arrested recently on flimsy charges. In Pakistan, two former prime ministers — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — have been in forced exile for nearly ten years now. General Musharraf has ensured they don’t return to Pakistan, except on his terms, and is now planning to get himself re-elected as president-in-uniform for another five-year term.

“But such things will never happen in India,” you will say. Our democratic system is too robust and deep-rooted to be so brazenly subverted, you will add. I share your faith in Indian democracy. Nevertheless, I cannot help draw your attention to some dark clouds gathering in the distant horizon. By the time this column appears, Pratibha Patil will have won the presidential election, thanks to the UPA’s numerical superiority and questionable abstentions by many political parties. And in democracy, the verdict of the majority must ultimately be respected.

However, democracy is much more than an unnees-bees ka khel. When the election was for the country’s highest constitutional office, the criteria for selecting the candidate ought to have conformed to the highest ideals of our Constitution and the stiffest ethical standards of democracy. Instead, as proved by the subsequent murky disclosures about Pratibha Patil, the UPA selected her on the basis of the “least common moral denominator”. (I have borrowed the term from an excellent blog — www.offstumped.nationalinterest.in — that states: “When public conscience is reduced to a moral vacuum, politics becomes a bottomless pit inhabited by politicians aspiring for the least common moral denominator.”) In other words, the criterion applied by the UPA chairperson for the candidate’s selection was: “Am I not entitled to having my loyal person in Rashtrapati Bhawan?”

... contd.