Mr Advani’s “regret”, though aimed at the foreign audience, is unlikely to convince anyone, least of all his own partymen. It would at best remind them of what he described as “the saddest day” in his life when the Babri Masjid was demolished. As the tallest leader of the party present at Ayodhya on that fateful day, it was his responsibility to avert the destruction of the ancient shrine to honour the commitment the BJP had given to the people and the apex court. Similarly, as Leader of the Opposition, it was his duty to ensure that the protest of the BJP MPs did not obstruct the functioning of Parliament which even passed the Budget without debate.

Inflation is rising for three apparent reasons. The foremost is the global oil prices ruling at $ 40-44 a barrel, which is beyond the government control. The second is the vaulting steel prices, again a global phenomenon. The government has reacted by cutting the customs and excise duties on oil and steel. The third is the excess money supply, estimated by the Finance Minister at Rs 60,000 crore. One option to mop up the excess money is to raise the interest rates. The RBI has already given the green signal for this. The SBI responded by hiking the fixed interest on housing loans. But the banks are generally reluctant to raise the interest rates because of good returns from the housing and other personal loans.

It is not difficult to visualise the future of India under Laloo. There is this delightful story about a Japanese delegation promising to turn Bihar into another Japan in one year. The RJD leader is said to have replied, "give me Japan and I will turn it into Bihar within one week". Why does he need to consult anyone for coping with the Bihar's financial mess? There is no record of his having approached the Election Commission for rewriting the rules of electoral politics. "Vote chhapna" has become a cottage industry in Lalooland. He should have given a quiet wink for a switch from "vote chhapna" to "note chhapna" instead of making the Prime Minister and the Planning Commission privy to his outlandish suggestion.

The Iraq scene presents a sorry picture. There are several centres in the so-called Sunni triangle that have become no-go areas for US troops because the political costs of using preponderant force would be very high and the Iraqi forces trained by the US are incapable of delivering and would rather not kill fellow Iraqis. Reconstruction work to provide the basic necessities is way behind schedule because of the insecure environment.

On the political plane, it was the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of the Shia faith who ended the stalemate between the young cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr and American troops in the holy city of Najaf. Al-Sadr is now back in his stronghold in Baghdad, his militia intact, and is seeking to keep US troops out of the Sadr city, Baghdad’s largest slum. The interim government is unrepresentative, consisting as it does of a large number of exiles, and, despite gestures from the interim Prime Minister, opponents of the US occupation have been kept out.

Much is riding on the promised elections in January; an event at the centre of Al-Sistani’s calculations and the main reason the Shia leader is tolerating the American occupation. Since elections will give the majority Shias the largest slice of power, their spiritual leader is not complaining. Everyone realises that if Iraq is to remain one country, the newly dispossessed traditional ruling Sunni elite must be accommodated, as must the Kurds’ desire for de facto independence. Whether and how the Grand Ayatollah will measure up to this Herculean task remains to be seen.

A major problem is how the US establishment will choose to pursue its policies. The re-election of Mr George Bush will make the task harder. But having expended treasure and blood, America will demand returns, in the form of permanent military bases, and if Washington yields to the temptation of encouraging supine Iraqi rulers, the legitimacy of a future dispensation would be called into question. These are issues for the future but need attention now, before events unfold in quick measure.

The standard American arguments are well known. How can American troops leave when the Iraqis are not ready effectively to police their country and placing US troops under the UN command is anathema to Washington. The US establishment has tried to resolve this dilemma by luring NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, to share the burden, with limited success thus far, the organisation agreeing only to training Iraqi security forces. NATO would be the answer to American prayers because the overall command would remain with Americans, but France and Germany, among others, are reluctant to let NATO be sucked into an American damage control operation to rescue the sole super power from a disastrous misadventure. The United Nations route has proved of limited value, despite Washington’s decision belatedly to woo it, after treating it with total contempt, because the levels of prevailing insecurity make UN interventions on the ground in Iraq something of an esoteric exercise.

It is still unclear how far a future US administration of either the Bush or Kerry variety would be willing to compromise on its grandiose objectives in West Asia. The welfare and security of Israel is, of course, a core American interest, but how far will the US establishment be prepared to go in its missionary goal of spreading democracy and in securing its realpolitik objectives? Disciplining Iran is a matter dear to American hearts but it would prove to be an even more difficult nettle to grasp than Iraq. And what of Iraq’s other neighbours - Syria and Saudi Arabia, to mention two?

Neo-conservatives in the United States are men and women with soaring ambitions trying to keep pace with their country’s military might. But it must be clear even to some of them that Iraq has proved a thing or two. It is all very well to proclaim the doctrine of unilateralism and pre-emption in launching attacks on nations, but military actions that do not enjoy international legitimacy or wide approval cannot succeed. Coalitions of the willing or ad hoc alliances cannot help even the mightiest power to reorder the world at its whim and fancy.

A majority of Americans could be persuaded to believe that invading and occupying Iraq was the only way to conduct America’s “war on terror” and that it was better to expend American blood and treasure abroad in order to safeguard lives at home. Equally, American voters can be roused to tolerate Iraq’s mounting costs by the rhetoric of spreading liberty around the world. The rest of the world views recent American action differently. It sees it as America’s overweening ambition and the historical inevitability of the fall of empires.

Saddam Hussein was not unique in adopting the methods he did in governing his country. Men of his ilk are dotted around the world. Nor is it sensible to transform the undoubted evil of the scourge of terrorism into a tangible enemy that might be fought in a war. It was perhaps the audacity of hijackers in transforming four passenger planes into missiles to hit at American targets of great symbolic importance such as New York’s World Trade Towers and the Pentagon in Washington that has most riled the US establishment. The key to fighting the menace is international cooperation in many fields, some of them mundane, rather than to send troops and aeroplanes to invade another country.

I was posted to Arunachal Pradesh, then a land of mystery for me, for earlier I had never gone beyond Allahabad towards the East. My elder son was just about 14 hours old when I had to part company with my wife. She still looked in some post-delivery pain and by her side lay a sleepy lump of our flesh, our newborn son.

I had only a vague idea about my place of posting and how exactly to reach there. It was drummed into our heads that officers never overstay their leave unless they are dead. So I kept a margin of two days while taking a train for Mokamehghat. The weird journey then involved trans-shipment by road at Mokameh and by rail at Barauni.

By the time I reached Rangia in Assam, I found myself among a good number of newly commissioned Army officers headed for the front. We organised ourselves quickly for the next leg of journey to Rangapara North. Our luggage was neatly piled in the first class compartment right up to the ceiling and we spread ourselves wherever we could find space and by evening we reached the God forsaken place.

Someone among us had talked about a Sardarji inviting Tensing Norgay and Edmund Hillary to his “dhaba” just when they reached the Everest. As if to give credence to this story, a real Sardarji appeared to whisk us away to his “dhaba” at the place. Besides, he also owned a bar and a cinema hall. The man gave us a feeling that we were the knights in the shining armour who had come to defend the farthest borders of our country and he was proud to serve us.

Early next day, we were on the move again in the train to North Lakhimpur. Most of our people got down on the way at Tezpur and went away waving to us warmly. Seven of us carried on to North Lakhimpur and were finally sitting in the Officers’ Mess of 33 Heavy Mortar Regiment to be met by our Commanding Officer, Lt-Colonel Mackeen, son of an Irish father and a Nepalese mother. A fine soul and an excellent soldier, he took no time to establish himself as our patriarch. “ How many of you are married”, he enquired. Three hands went up, including mine.

He then asked how many of us had kids. My lone hand went up this time. “Son or daughter and how old”, he asked? I said, “ Son, sir. Four days old”. “ What?”, he said, surprised. I clarified that he was 14 hours old when I left home. The grand old man kept this in a corner of his mind.

I was soon on my way to my sub-unit, 116, Heavy Mortar Battery then deployed at Ziro in Subansiri frontier division of NEFA among the half-naked and heavily tattooed ‘Apatani’ tribals.

Huge processions block traffic that cause avoidable inconvenience to the public. Involuntarily harnessed school children, suffering heat and fatigue, are a common sight on these occasions.
What do we gain out of all this hullabaloo, individually or socially?

The next day we are back to our normal worst, indulging in the same dishonesty, corruption, work-shirk, indiscipline, under-cuttings and other social negatives as if nothing had happened the day before. The system, society and individuals remain as disoriented as before.

The only people who perceive that they have gained are politicians and their props or the organisers of the events by way of getting an opportunity to pop up before the crowds. Quite often they use these occasions for running down their opponents. Even during religion-based celebrations, they forget the sanctity of the occasion, stoop low and indulge in the game of one-upmanship that has no relevance to the public interest. We have become a nation of hypocrites!

The birthday of S. Radhakrishnan is celebrated as Teachers Day and more than a week is used to hold discussions, seminars etc by academic institutions and other organisations on the status of education and education reforms.

It has been going on for decades and reports of different commissions and committees are referred to and discussed at length, but we have not been able to move perceptibly in any positive direction so far. Our school education system is creating a student community of muggers and stereotypes, who get into a race for grabbing seats in institutions of higher learning, where real merit is often a casualty.

Political parties of different hues, after coming to power, fiddle with the textbooks and interfere with the affairs of educational institutions because of their narrow ideology, as if there is nothing else that demands attention in the field of education. Even when we talk of quality of education and educational reforms, we seldom consider for whom we are talking or thinking about!

Whatever be the content of education or the quality of its delivery, we have failed to create an environ of level play for all students alike. Discussions and deliberations on the content and quality of education will not bridge the fast-developing gap between the opportunity the rich, educated and urban placed parents have and the poor, uneducated or semi-educated, rural and other disadvantageously placed parents have for their children. As a consequence, it is now a sort of race between highly unequals and the system has no plan or any perception to correct the progressively aggravating situation.

At school, it is the fundamentals of learning that need to be strengthened and it is the value orientation, which is more important for a clean, happy and successful life and for making a healthy contribution to the development and welfare of society. This is exactly where we lack in the content of school education and the uniformity in its delivery to all students, irrespective of the economic and social status of their parents.

This has two pronged deleterious effect on the social, cultural and economic development as well as political ethos of society. Our education produces enough number of self-seeking and values-starved professionals, including scientists, teachers, doctors, engineers as well as corrupt, crafty and criminal politicians. Our education has also produced crowds of hardcore fundamentalists, be they Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or followers of other religions.

A few may realise that the Indian society is moving on a path to disaster and there are no attempts to apply corrections. Socio-economic development is bypassing the large majority of the population, because they do not have an equal access to the quality education.

There are enough number of cases where the candidates, after competing successfully, could not avail of counselling for admission to medical/dental courses due to lack of financial resources. This denies them a level play in the employment market and in opportunities in self-employment.

Also, the access to health and medical facilities for this large majority is decreasing day by day due to the declining purchasing power and escalating costs of these services.

Good or bad, it is the opium of religion and the built-in fatalism that is keeping the disadvantaged and deprived populations on the hold. Otherwise, the situation is fast developing into an explosive one. The writing on the wall is clear. Coming events cast their shadow before. Disquietingly an increasing number of social crimes, economic offences, political wranglings, civil unrest and progressive polarisation of society are sure signs of impending disaster.