Mission Kashmir Having consolidated his position at home, the President of Pakistan is clear that any diplomatic advance in Agra will be measured against India's willingness to review its position on Kashmir. Can Prime Minister Vajpayee oblige his guest?

Mother Fury
M. Karunanidhi and other leaders of the DMK may be out of jail, but retribution and rehabilitation will continue to define the
Jayalalitha Raj.

Trust Betrayed
India's largest mutual fund scheme, US-64, takes a tumble for the second time in three years. As pressure mounts to stem the rot and chairman Subramanyam goes, the small investor is left in the lurch.

The Gender Gestapo
A controversial sex-selection procedure widely available in India skirts the law and prevents the very conception of female babies.

VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN

Noble Mistakes

By Tavleen Singh

Is Atal Bihari Vajpayee overly blessed with the milk of human kindness or is he just a goof? I ask the question in the context of two recent events in which we saw the prime minister being resoundingly biffed in the nose by two of his leading women opponents: Jayalalitha Jayaram and Sonia Gandhi. Since these two ladies were directly responsible for bringing his previous government down two years ago you would think that he would have shown a certain wariness, even a shade of ruthlessness, while dealing with them. But perhaps because poet-prime ministers are genteel creatures, unversed in the evil twists and turns of politics, he continues to treat them with generosity. So Jayalalitha, convicted of corruption, was allowed to become chief minister despite being banned from contesting elections. And Sonia was allowed to lead India's delegation to the UN without Vajpayee realising that she would use the opportunity for political rather than national purposes.

What could he have done about Jayalalitha, you may ask, if the people of Tamil Nadu wanted her as their leader? Well, if the prime minister was really concerned about criminals holding public office he could have ensured that the Election Commission clarified during the election campaign itself if it was possible for Jayalalitha to become chief minister when she was banned from contesting polls. Had the issue been settled in advance, voters might have thought twice about voting for the AIADMK. But since this crucial point remained murky, it was easy for Jayalalitha to use her sweeping victory in the assembly elections to bully a pliant governor into appointing her chief minister at top speed. Delhi watched in helpless silence without even urging the President to order the governor not to swear her in. Surely something could have been done to prevent Jayalalitha's appointment. If not, we may as well drop that rule about criminals not being allowed to contest elections since Jayalalitha has proved that it is meaningless.

Last week Jayalalitha proved that the prime minister's generosity in not stopping her from becoming chief minister was a grave mistake. If proof was needed that criminals should not hold public office it has come in the rogue elephant manner in which the AIADMK regime is rampaging through Tamil Nadu politics. After arresting two of his ministers and a friendly former chief minister she thumbed her nose at Vajpayee once more by ordering him to drop Murasoli Maran and T.R. Baalu from his Cabinet on the absurd ground that they behaved like "goondas and thugs".

Luckily, in these days of private television channels we are ourselves able to judge who behaves how. Images of policemen pushing M. Karunanidhi around as if he were the bandit Veerappan and not a former chief minister will remain etched in public memory. As will the fact that Jayalalitha still believes in the "midnight-knock" method of policing. Why did a former chief minister need to be arrested in the middle of the night? Why did he need to be arrested at all when he could have simply been produced in court and charged with whatever it is Jayalalitha thinks he did wrong?

The sordid episode underlines the Vajpayee Government's failure to keep a convicted criminal out of public office. We are now likely to see that office so debased that it is only a matter of time before the people of Tamil Nadu realise law and order is only what the chief minister says it is. Veerappan will continue to roam free in Tamil Nadu while the state's chief minister focuses her energies on locking up her political rivals.

The prime minister, meanwhile, goes out of his way to promote his opponents. So, Sonia was sent to the UN General Assembly as leader of our delegation to the special conference on HIV-AIDS. What she had to contribute to the conference was forgettable but she used the opportunity to project herself as India's future leader joking about there being "no vacancy right now".

Sonia met Congressmen, Senators, senior functionaries in the Bush Administration and NRIs. To the Congressmen she brought "greetings and appreciation of my countrymen and countrywomen". Which country, we could ask, but what would be the point now that Vajpayee has so graciously given her the chance to project herself internationally as an Indian leader. This was clearly such a defining moment in Sonia's political career that she talked about matters of policy and foreign affairs with a confidence she has never exhibited in India. She even managed to discuss our nuclear policy, something she has been hopelessly confused about in the past.

There are now mutterings among Vajpayee's ministers that sending Sonia to the UN was "a mistake" because she did more for her own political image than for battling HIV-AIDS. But the prime minister is a generous man, so generous that we need to perhaps worry about what he will give General Pervez Musharraf as a farewell present. Kashmir?

MetroScape

Frames Of Life
Nina Shivdasani Rovshen Sugati's Conceptual Art Imageographs, on show at NCPA's Piramal Gallery till July 14, attempts to capture the "essence of people and situations" as she lets her subjects "reveal themselves" to her.
more...

Looking Glass

Bangalore Entertainment:
Jaamba Jungle

Mumbai Luxury Yacht:
Sea King

Hyderabad Store:
Giant Hyper Market

With the Trinamool-Congress alliance gone sour, Mamata Banerjee is desperate to be back in the NDA. Is she being inconsistent or opportunistic, asks INDIA TODAY's Correspondent Labonita Ghosh in
About Turn