As somebody who also writes a weekly column, I know exactly what he means. Rarely has it been more difficult to find subjects that touch a chord with readers or, even, issues that provoke me enough.

Shekhar’s column, however, got me thinking. He made several interesting points. Among them: this government had lost its sense of where India was heading or what the public was thinking; that India had a remarkable capacity for healing bitter divisions as was evidenced by the reconciliation between Sikhs and Hindus in the 1980s; that the BJP was no longer regarded as untouchable by most political parties; and that we were into a new era of inclusiveness.

In the spirit of that new inclusiveness, let me frankly concede that this week’s Counterpoint is inspired by the issues raised in Shekhar’s Saturday column. I agree with much of what he says. He uses the Punjab example to illustrate India’s essential unity. I can think of others: the bitter anti-Hindi and partly secessionist struggle waged by Tamil parties in the 1950s and 1960s which is now forgotten; the ability of the people of the Northeast to forgive the shameful brutality with which we treated them (the Nagas first, then the Mizos in the 1970s); and the ability of such great cities as Bombay to heal after the communal riots of the early 1990s.

I agree with him also about the change in the manner in which the BJP is perceived. Some of it, of course, is the new inclusiveness. But much of it is the new fragmentation. We now live in an age where it is hard to conceive of any political party winning a majority on its own. In an era of coalitions, nobody can remain a political untouchable forever.

Shekhar uses the examples of Inder Gujral and HD Deve Gowda, two accidental Prime Ministers of India, who owed their elevations to the so-called fight against communal forces. Both have now snuggled up to those same communal forces: Gujral to the Akali Dal, and Deve Gowda (at arm’s length, via his son) to the BJP itself.

There are also endless other instances. Chandrababu Naidu went from being convenor of secular forces to jumping into bed with the BJP. Both Tamil parties (the DMK and the ADMK) will go with whoever offers them the best deal — secularism has nothing to do with it. The NCP may be a component of the UPA but in the run-up to the last election it entered into detailed negotiations with the BJP. Mayawati has an on and off relationship with the BJP. Mulayam Singh Yadav uses anti-BJP rhetoric for the benefit of Muslim voters but it is no secret that his party has always kept a channel open to the Sangh Parivar.

The change in the political mood has three major consequences. The first has to do with the BJP itself. As long as it is the party of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (and perhaps LK Advani), it will have relatively little difficulty in attracting allies. But the problem is that it is not just the party of Vajpayee and Advani. It is also the party of Narendra Modi. And even during the Vajpayee era, the central leadership was unable to rein in Narendra Modi, let alone replace him.

The central crisis of the BJP, at the moment, is one of leadership. If you were to go by the sentiments of the cadres, there is no doubt that Narendra Modi would be the obvious choice as the 21st century leader. But in today’s inclusive, coalition-driven politics, Modi will not be acceptable to allies. Therefore, the BJP will have to find a moderate face to lead it (Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj or somebody like that) into the next election. A moderate leader will attract allies. But will he be able to control the Narendra Modis and the lunatic fringe of the Parivar? Given that even Vajpayee failed to prevent mass murder from being committed on the streets of Gujarat, it is hard to see how any of the potential BJP leaders will be able to control all of the party. And yet, the moment the moderates lose their grip, the allies will all abscond; even inclusiveness has its limits.

The second consequence has to do with the nature of political rhetoric. Of course, I accept that secularism is the key to India’s unity. And I was as perturbed as the next secularist by the last BJP government’s attempts to rewrite our history and to try and transform the nature of our institutions. But I don’t think that anybody buys all this nonsense about ‘secular forces’ and ‘communal forces’ any longer. Partly, this is because — as Shekhar’s examples demonstrate — most politicians have revealed themselves to be hypocrites in this regard. And partly, it is because, as important as secularism is, it cannot be the sole defining factor for political judgments.

Most political parties have come to terms with this. The exception is the Left. And to some extent I understand the CPM’s sensitivities. But let’s not forget that secularism has been used to cover up a multitude of sins. The CPI cheerfully supported the Emergency on secular grounds as though democracy itself was of no consequence. And these days, the CPM takes the line that good governance is secondary to secularism. More bizarrely, it acts as though caste-ism is wonderful, while secularism is bad.

The third major consequence is one that we in the media focus too little on. It’s easy to talk about inclusiveness when the BJP is out of power and the minorities feel no threat. But all indicators suggest that India’s Muslims are feeling increasingly alienated from the system. One of the great boasts of Indian secularism has been the refusal of Indian Muslims to subscribe to pan-Islamic extremism. We brag about the absence of Indians within al-Qaeda, and note approvingly that Muslims throughout India refuse to see the Kashmir conflict in Hindu-Muslim terms.

I don’t know how long we can continue with these claims. It is unreasonable to expect that, as the world’s Muslims get increasingly Islamised, Muslims in a country which has the world’s second-largest Islamic population will remain immune to these trends. If Muslims perceive the BJP as being hostile to their interests — and there is no doubt that the vast majority do and even vote tactically to defeat the BJP — then the new inclusiveness may well end up excluding them. And once they feel ignored by the political system, they are at the mercy of fanatics and religious extremists.

You don’t have to be a secularist to concede that this is a worrying possibility. India cannot survive as an entity if a substantial chunk of its population feels that it has been excluded from the political mainstream. To recognise that Muslim concerns need to be addressed is not to be pro-Muslim. It is to be pro-Indian.

And finally, I think I agree with Shekhar when he talks about urban anger against the government. The problem with the UPA is that it has fallen off its tightrope. Any government has to address two major constituencies. The first is the aam aadmi who is supposed to be the focus of this regime. And the second is the emerging middle class which is increasingly powering India’s rise in the world.

The BJP got it wrong when it wooed the middle class, but forgot about the aam aadmi. The UPA is making its own mistake. Such factors as inflation are alienating the aam aadmi. And the middle class feels that the government is completely unappreciative of its success.

Over the last month the perception that the government is targeting electorally significant minorities has gathered strength. Such issues as reservation and minority-ism matter less during a political honeymoon. But once a ministry crosses the halfway mark, fatigue sets in and the public are less tolerant. The fiasco of the attempt to consider imposing President’s Rule in UP tells us something about the regime’s lack of political skills. It has now ended up with the worst of both worlds. It is seen as wanting to act undemocratically and yet lacking the courage and the capacity to achieve even that. And Mulayam Singh Yadav has scored a public relations victory — at least on the 24-hour news channels.

Responses to the budget are indicative of some of the disillusionment. I agree with the Finance Minister when he says that middle class objections to his budget amount to nothing more than a demand for more exemptions. Where I disagree with him is this: I think he should let the exemptions continue.

They don’t amount to very much in revenue terms. But the signals they send out may well determine the future of this government.

The Congress: At one level, the Congress can treat the result of the vote as a victory. It stood up to Prakash Karat’s blackmail. It fought for a deal that is in the national interest. And it defied expectations by remaining in office.

But at a deeper level, I’m not sure how much of a victory it was. As much as I support the deal, admire the Prime Minister, and am relieved that the government survived, there’s no denying that the victory was the consequence of corruption.

There were two kinds of corruption. The first consisted of the furious deal-making that preceded the vote. God alone knows how many tawdry compromises on matters of policy and principle were made in the pursuit of victory. The go-ahead to the Ram Setu project, the promise to induct Shibu Soren in the Cabinet (after the Prime Minister had refused to include him on moral grounds), the renaming of Lucknow airport, the assurance of policy changes to northeastern MPs etc.

You can argue that this is not corruption because no money changed hands. I would argue that it is actually ‘worse’because policies and the long-term interests of the Indian state were compromised.

And then, there was the financial corruption. There is no doubt that MPs were bribed to abstain or defect. I have no idea whether the famous sting tapes will ever be telecast. But nobody in politics seriously disputes that money changed hands or that the victory was bought.

The loser, in the long run, is Manmohan Singh. Once this ‘Singh is King’nonsense fades, and the euphoria dissipates, the Prime Minister will find that he is perceived as just another politician. For a man who has spent his entire career being regarded as a paragon of virtue, this is hardly a happy consequence.

I do not believe that Manmohan Singh approved of — or was even aware of — the payments made on behalf of his government. But, given that he has so eagerly taken the credit for bringing the Samajwadi Party on board, can he really disown the activities of his new friends?

Manmohan Singh is an intelligent man. He must have been aware that entrusting the future of his government to the Samajwadi Party is the political equivalent of asking Moninder Singh Pandher to take care of your children.

But why blame the SP alone? Every political observer in Delhi knew that the Congress had drawn up a list of ‘vulnerable’MPs, and that responsibility for ‘winning them over’(which sounds nicer than ‘buying their votes’) had been divided between various Congress leaders. It strains credulity now to say that this had nothing to do with the Prime Minister or the battle that he got into with Prakash Karat. Perhaps, others did the actual buying, but one is reminded of Sarojini Naidu’s famous remark about Mahatma Gandhi: ‘It costs a lot of money to keep this man in poverty.’ Except, in this case, it costs a lot of money to keep Manmohan Singh in power.

As long as the Prime Minister was regarded as an otherworldly figure, interested only in matters of policy, he was morally insulated from the dirt of Indian politics. Now that he is seen as a manically aggressive and arrogantly inaccessible politician, he can no longer distance himself from the deals struck in his name or the bribes paid to save his office.

The Samajwadi Party: Despite the conventional wisdom, I don’t think that the SP has been damaged by the shenanigans surrounding the vote. To lose your reputation, you must first have one.

Nobody expected the SP to behave differently. And it has lived up to public expectations. Even if the sting tapes are telecast, Amar Singh will live to fight another day.

More damaging for the party has been Amar Singh’s failure to keep his promise that he would deliver 39 MPs to the Congress. The defections and the revolts suggest that he has much less control over the SP than he would like us to believe.

The happy consequence of this may be that he will be a slightly more subdued figure in the months ahead, less prone to bluster and bravado. Already, he has stopped attacking the likes of P. Chidambaram and Murli Deora.

The SP desperately needs an electoral tie-up with the Congress at the general election. If the alliance falls through, the Congress will lose very little; it has already virtually written off UP. But the SP needs the Congress vote share to make a strong electoral showing. Without an alliance, Mulayam Singh can spend the twilight of his political career watching Mayawati rule UP

When I was asked by Siddhartha Basu and Star TV’s boss Uday Shankar to be part of the jury I agreed not only because both men are old friends (both produced shows I anchored during the 1990s), but because I thought it would give me an opportunity to view a cross-section of middle India — even if it is only on tape.

Before each schedule, the jury, consisting of Siddhartha, ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, myself and senior executives from Star and Synergy (Siddhartha’s company) meet in a Bombay hotel. We examine over 180 application forms and watch the same number of auditions.

So far, we’ve chosen the contestants for two schedules and I’ve seen close to 400 auditions from all over the country. It’s been exhausting. It’s been fun. But most of all, it has given me an insight into the hopes and aspirations of people from all over the country, from virtually every level of the TV-viewing middle classes. We’ve seen bankers, Infosys programmers and airline pilots. And we’ve seen ticket collectors, dhaba-owners and middle-aged housewives from small towns.

Obviously, this is not a representative sample. But here are some of the things I learnt about the mood of middle India while participating in this process.

Religion: For some reason, the first question on the application form asks contestants to state their religion. I found that all religious minorities (Christians, Sikhs, Muslims etc) gave straightforward answers. But a surprisingly large number of Hindus took exception. On many forms, people wrote things like “humanist” or “agnostic”. It was almost as though they resented being asked.

Not that there was any objection to God himself. The form asked people to describe themselves. One of the most common descriptions was “God-fearing” used in a positive sense. On the other hand, when contestants were asked what they would do with the Rs 5 crore if they won, some said they would give it to charity, but nobody mentioned a religious charity, a temple, a mosque or whatever.

Indian secularism also seems alive and well among the middle class. There were many Muslim applicants and, without exception, all of those whose auditions I saw were unselfconscious and proud of their Muslim identities. Many women in burkhas turned up to sing. So did many men in skullcaps and beards.

They referred to their Islamic identities in their auditions (“Hai Allah!” etc) in a matter-of-fact way and acted as though it made no difference —  which, of course, it should not. At a time when there are fears about the communalisation of the middle class, it was encouraging to see Indian secularism in action.

As interesting for me was the column where contestants were asked to list their close friends. Many Hindus listed Muslims and, oddly enough, Muslims tended to list mainly Hindus

All goes well till the teacher finally asks a very reticent boy to tell the class about his father. Reluctantly, the boy begins: “My daddy is a rapist. He pounces on strange women and does very bad things to them…”

The teacher is horrified. She stops the boy mid-sentence, dismisses the rest of the class and sits him down in front of her alone. “Tell me truthfully,” she says, “is what you said about your father really true?”

The boy looks embarrassed. Finally, he admits that no, it wasn’t true. He had made up the story.

The teacher is even more appalled. “But why,” she asks, “do you need to make up a story that is so horrible?” “Well miss,” he stammers, “it’s because what my father really does is even more shameful.”

“Really?” says the teacher. “What does he do?”The boy whispers the answer: “He plays cricket for India.”

Alright. It’s not terribly funny; worth a chuckle or two if perhaps but hardly side-splitting stuff. But jokes like this made the sounds for much of last week. Other chain-mails spoke of the Indian cricket team’s schedule (“next match St Bede’s Boys’ School; after that Nirmala Ladies College…” and so on) and some suggested that the murderers had killed the wrong coach in a West Indies hotel room.

Rarely have I seen an entire nation get so angry, so outraged and so bitter about something that was, in the final analysis, no more than a sporting encounter. For the first few days as India began to rave and rant, I thought we were just being silly. But having thought about it, I think our response to the World Cup debacle tells us a few things about our national character.

We are a nation of dreamers. Even before the team left for the West Indies, most cricket commentators conceded that we had, at best, only an outside chance of winning the World Cup. Judging by previous performance over the last few months, it was not unreasonable to assume that we would make it to the semi-finals. But anything more seemed like wishful thinking.
Yet, in our minds, getting to the final was almost a sure thing. We swallowed all the hype about the blue billion, about how the prayers of the Indian masses would guarantee victory.

The facts may not have been on our side. But we were only too ready to mistake dreams for certainty.

Such is our gullibility that we become easy prey to marketers and salesmen. It is no secret that Indians are essentially a credulous people. We believe in things that much of the civilised world treats with disdain: godmen, black magic, astrology and, sometimes, even the promises of duplicitous politicians.

Marketers have worked out that they can exploit this gullibility and this willingness to suspend disbelief for their commercial benefit.

The cricket hysteria has been fed and magnified by crores of advertising rupees. The enthusiasm surrounding our World Cup prospects may have emerged out of some naïve belief in the powers of our team, but it was fanned to extreme and unrealistic levels by ad men and marketing experts who realised that they could profit by associating their products with this hysteria.

Compare the level of cricket craziness surrounding this year’s World Cup with the enthusiasm demonstrated by Indians in 1983, the one time we actually brought home the Cup. It wasn’t that we didn’t love cricket in 1983. It just wasn’t as big a business then. And so, there was nothing like the 2007 hysteria in those days. The unrealistic optimism surrounding our prospects this year was largely a creation of marketers who wanted to exploit our gullibility to flog their products.

We swing from one extreme to another. Rarely do we find any kind of balance in our assessments of people. We have seen this in the political field. When Indira Gandhi was on a high in 1972, we treated her as a goddess. When she fell from grace in 1977, we acted as though she was a demon. But by 1980, we were ready to vote her to power again.

So it is with cricket. Just take our attitude to Sourav Ganguly. By the time he was finally booted out of the Indian team a couple of years ago, most of us had bought the line that he was a tired, old has-been who was clinging on to his place in the team only so that he could keep his endorsements. (Except in Calcutta where Bengali chauvinism always wins out over everything else.) Then, a few months ago, we suddenly performed a 180-degrees about-turn. Now Sourav was a victim, a great batsman who had been unjustly treated by the demonic Greg Chappell. He had to win back his place in the team.

In the aftermath of the recent debacle, we have demonstrated a similar fickleness. Once, they would not let Mahendra Singh Dhoni move around in Ranchi because his fans would smother him with their affection. Now, they attack the house he is constructing. Once, Virendra Sehwag was a public idol; now he has to slink back to Delhi to avoid public anger. Once, policemen were posted outside the homes of cricketers to keep the adoring crowds at bay. Now, the policemen are there to protect the players from violent attacks.

In our anger, we pick on the very things we always admired. Why do cricketers end up endorsing so many products and appearing in so many ads?

The reason is simple enough: consumers tend to buy products that are endorsed by members of the Indian cricket team. No advertiser would spend so many crores on securing endorsements otherwise.

And yet, the moment the team starts performing badly, we seize on the endorsements as the reason for the failures on the field. “These guys are too busy shooting ad films to concentrate on the game” we declare self-righteously. Or “they are more interested in endorsements than in cricket.”

Not only is this a reversal of our own emotions — the only reason they are asked to endorse products is because we then go out and buy them — it is also illogical. All cricketers know that their ability to win endorsement deals depends solely on their performance on the field. They are not idiots. They are hardly likely to want to play badly because they’d rather concentrate on the ads. They know that the ads depend on the cricket.

We often miss the point about other people’s success. Of course cricket is a huge business today and cricket earns most of its revenues from the Indian subcontinent. But where does this money go? Even if you take away the commercial benefits that accrue to advertisers, the overwhelming majority of the rupees earned from cricket go to the BCCI and to the TV companies to whom they sell the rights. Payments to players amount to a very small proportion of the total revenues.

And yet, have you ever heard anyone say, “The BCCI must be held accountable as it earns hundreds of crores from cricket” or, “we should pick on the TV companies that deal in rights worth millions of dollars”?
Instead, each defeat leads to the same refrain. “These cricketers earn too much money.” Always, we single out the guys who actually make the least.

And finally, there’s the question of national character. It is clear now that France would probably have won the football World Cup if Zinedine Zidane had not lost his head and butted an Italian player who made an obscene remark about his sister.

Yet, how do you suppose France reacted? The President invited the entire football team to the Elysee Palace and gave a little speech in which he praised Zidane as a national hero. Nobody had forgotten that France had won the previous World Cup almost entirely because of Zidane’s goals.

Contrast this with how we have treated our team after its return from the West Indies. I don’t see President Kalam inviting the cricketers to Rashtrapati Bhavan and telling them “Don’t let the defeat get you down”. Advertisers are rushing to pull out ads featuring cricketers.

What does it say about us as a nation that we can be so petty, so unforgiving, so small and so vindictive towards men we regarded as the pride of India only a month ago? Does it not suggest that we are small-minded, ungrateful and needlessly vicious?

I think it does. And I think the way in which we are reacting shames us as a nation.

Yes, the cricket team may have failed India. But, by being so petty, narrow-minded and needlessly bitter, all of us have failed India far more.

But because we make our living spinning tales, we are good at pretending otherwise. Years ago, when some misguided person first made me an editor, I resolved never to suffer from that dreaded affliction called ‘Editoritis’. Those of you who know our breed will recognise the condition. Its symptoms includes an inability to say “I don’t know” to any question we are asked and a tendency to hold forth at parties with opinions and anecdotes.

But, over the last few weeks, even as I have resisted Editoritis and told people the truth about the UP election — which is “I have no idea what will happen and anyone who says he does is a fool or a liar” — I have wondered about the state of our electoral system.

The only thing any of us can say about UP with any degree of certainty is this: no party will get an overall majority.

That, in itself, is not particularly surprising. But in most electoral systems, a hung Parliament should allow us to draw certain conclusions. For instance, we thought it probable that no party would get an overall majority at the last parliamentary election. But we knew who the BJP’s allies and likely coalition partners were. Similarly, we knew that if the Congress crossed a certain number, it could count on the support of the Left and some regional parties.

But in the case of UP, nobody knows anything. Even if Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) does emerge as the single-largest party, that by itself is no guarantee that it will be able to form a government.

Who will Mulayam align with? Given the things Amar Singh and he have been saying about the Congress, it is unlikely that they will ask Rahul Gandhi for support. Nor can the SP go with the BSP given the state of relations between the two parties. The logical alliance would be with the SP’s old pals, the BJP, but neither party can really legitimise this relationship. The BJP would find it difficult to explain to its cadres why it is supporting the man who opened fire on kar sevaks. And Mulayam’s image as the champion of Muslims would be forever dented.

That leaves us with only two real options: another kind of unprincipled alliance or a large-scale breaking of all par-ties thanks to liberal infusions of cash (which is how governments tend to be formed in UP these days).

Neither will be the democratic outcome that the framers of our Constitution had intended.

All of which got me thinking: isn’t there something seriously wrong with our electoral system if it can guarantee neither stability nor fairness?

Students of electoral politics will tell you that the first-past-the-post system has many flaws. It mitigates against parties that have a widespread following and favours those whose support is narrowly concentrated. For instance, regional parties who get lots of votes in a small number of seats do extremely well while those who get many votes spread over many constituencies win fewer seats.

We borrowed our system from Britain where the first-past-the-post principle has seriously damaged the Liberal Party which has support throughout Britain but does not have enough concentrated votes to win in too many individual constituencies. The traditional British defence of the system is that though it may be unfair, it at least guarantees stability: Labour or the Conservatives usually win a majority.

But if you look at India’s experience with the first-past-the-post system, the reality is that it does not even guarantee stability. No party has won a parliamentary majority for nearly two decades (since 1989). All the system does is to throw up hung Parliament after hung Parliament. Parties based on ideology which have widespread support are doomed. Those that are based on regionalism and caste do extremely well because their votes are concentrated in specific constituencies.

And eventually, when the time comes to form coalition governments, it is the regionalists and the casteists who call the shots because they have the numbers. UP is just one example of how logic and ideology play no role in government formation. But this principle holds true of central governments as well. Whether it is the UPA or the NDA, it is the regionalists and the casteists who wield the real power.

In the early 1990s, when the political system fragmented and hung Parliaments became the norm, commentators and editorialists told us not to worry about this phenomenon because it would lead to more democracy — smaller parties would get a greater say in governance.

I think the time has now come to admit that this view is arrant nonsense. The collapse of the majority-governments and the growth of coalitions of convenience has not advanced the cause of democracy one bit. Instead, it has promoted casteism, regionalism and communalism. Never before in the history of independent India have educated people been more turned off by the state of our political system than today.

So what can be done?
The first-past-the-post method is, by no means, the only electoral system available to a democracy. In much of Europe, they prefer elections by proportional representation (PR). PR has many variations but one common method is this: political parties provide lists of candidates in order of preference (say 300 candidates per party).

Voters are asked to vote for parties, and depending on the number of votes polled, each party gets to have a proportion of its candidates elected. A party with 40 per cent of the vote gets 40 per cent of its candidates into Parliament. One with 20 per cent only gets 20 per cent of its candidates elected, and so on. Parties with under 10 per cent of the vote get nothing.

The advantage of the system is that it is more genuinely representative and that it accurately captures the mood of the nation. Small parties with concentrated support no longer have an unfair advantage. Because a party must win a minimum of 10 per cent of the vote to get any candi-dates into Parliament, regional parties would have to strike pre-poll alliances with others and contest under a common symbol. There will be no room for horse-trading once Parliament convenes because the smaller parties will already have declared their alliances.

Of course there are dis-advantages. Independents would disappear — but then, they are a dying breed anyway. The relationship between an MP and his constituency would end. New parties would find it harder to break in.

Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? It’s not clear that they do. But that’s not my point. My concern is that even though our political system is in decay and the first-past-the-post method has failed today’s India, none of us bothers to look for alternative electoral systems.

This particular form of PR may not be the solution we are looking for. Perhaps another variation will work better. Or perhaps we need something entirely different — a US-style Presidential system, for instance.

My point is more basic: let’s admit that we have a problem and let’s look at the alternatives. Unless we have an informed national debate on the subject, we will never find a way out of this mess.

So, if you are as puzzled as I am by the complexities of the UP elections and as convinced that there has to be a better way, then let’s ask for a national debate.

I’m not saying we’ll find the right answer at once. But, if we don’t start looking now, we’ll never find it at all.

And if any suggestion that it’s time to consider junking this electoral system and finding an alternative that’s more suited to today’s India sounds like yet another case of Editoritis, of my lecturing you on what to do next, then what can I say? Except this: sorry, but somebody has to start this debate!

My thanks to Dorab Sopariwala for making me conscious of the need for electoral reform.

We were wrong. The Left was right.

Anybody who has travelled out of the hellhole that is Delhi airport will know that things have got much, much worse than anyone thought possible. Nobody disputes that the airport needs to be modernised and renovated. But equally, all such renovation must be done in a manner that causes as little inconvenience as possible to already harassed passengers.

In fact, the modernisation process has been so poorly conceived that large sections of the airport are off-limits to passengers and rather than open up new gates to ease congestion (at the main entrance or in the security area), the airport’s private owners have simply looked for space to hire out to shopkeepers at fancy rents.

To the greed and incompetence of the new management, add the ineptitude and laziness of the government authorities that man its various functions. Chief among these is the immigration department. Immigration officers face a genuine problem. There aren’t enough counters to handle the flood of passengers at peak hour. But this does not explain why so many counters go unmanned. Even when the queues stretch to the gate of the terminal and then back again, something like a third of the counters will be empty. Worse still, many of the immigration officers are marginally literate police inspectors who hate their jobs (no bribes to be earned at the airport). Even when they know how to use their computers (and many cannot type), they couldn’t be bothered to clear passengers quickly. A month ago, I arrived on an international flight to find a scrum in the arrival hall as passengers mobbed the two immigration officers on duty. Nobody bothered to enforce the discipline of a queue or to see that other counters were manned.

I could go on. The CISF has improved its overall standard but its officers still account for half the delays at the airport (though part of the problem is infrastructural). Airline counter staff tend to be rude and unhelpful. The road outside the terminal is so unevenly tarred that is almost impossible to run your trolley smoothly. And that’s assuming you find a trolley.

Contrast the nightmare that is airport privatisation with the Indian Railways, where, against all odds, things have steadily got better over the last four years.

That’s when you realise that the only thing worse than a slothful public sector monopoly is a greedy private sector monopoly.