As a follow up of the agreement reached between the agitating students at Jantar-Mantar and the government of India recently, some pertinent and important questions have arisen that need answers. These answers have to come from the government, the leaders of the agitators of Jantar-Mantar, New Delhi, the political class of the nation, the civil society and the parents of the agitators. The way things were let loose by the organisers at the venue of the agitation and especially during the ‘Sansad-Chalo’ march on 20 July 2026, they have disturbed the very edifice of decency in public life, importance of moral values in society and also the public order.

In a democracy like India where diversity is a part of our civilization and culture, difference of opinion is a fact of life. We have existed despite and inspite of all these differences and diversity and marched ahead for the last thousands of years as a great civilization. When we got freedom from the British colonial rule in 1947, we chose parliamentary democracy and also adopted the constitution that showed us the way to run the chosen democracy and the democratic way of life.

However, though unfortunately, some politicians and their families after 1947 took it for granted to be in the government for all the times to come. The Congress led this notion successfully for a long time. The first family of Congress party, the Nehru-Gandhi family, took it as its entitlement to be in the government on a permanent basis. This false notion also travelled to other regional parties in the country in their own context. Congress always treated the intermittent rule by parties other than it at the Centre as a time-gap arrangement. This theory of time-gap arrangement was for the first time seriously challenged by the BJP in and after 2014.

The whole fuss among the parties in opposition and particularly the Congress is about the continuation of the Modi-led NDA-BJP government at the Centre for the third time continuously coupled with the establishment of same governments in most of the states in the country. The opposition, due to its........

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