RashtraPatil?

Today is the last day for filing nominations for the presidential election. As of now it looks as if when votes are cast on July 19 the winner will be an ex-governor who has been an innovative banker, an unconventional educator and has taken strikingly bold moves in agri-business and in running socially conscious hostelry. Add, of course, to this the election favourite8217;s ability to read history in a fashion that angers Muslim clerics one day and 8216;satisfies8217; them a few days later. We may add here that were it possible for dead Mughals, like dead gurus, to talk, they would have communicated to us their pleasure at finding themselves at the centre of a 21st-century political debate.

Due note is taken of the many spirited arguments being put forward by Congress leaders. P.R. Dasmunshi, who has brought a card magic metaphor into this discussion, easily leads this competition. He will hope his party leader has taken due note, too. Dasmunshi for president in 2012? But we do not have the luxury of contemplating 2012. The five years till then raises the deeply discomfiting possibility of the institution of presidency being subject to the kind of questions that have never been asked before. Let8217;s ask a few now. And ask them of the Congress. Did we really need a head of state whose curriculum vitae can always inspire investigative reporters? Did this country really deserve a Rashtrapati Bhavan resident whose close family members are acutely vulnerable to the law suddenly taking its own course? Will the nation feel comfortable if the next president has to sign into law a Bill on, say, regulating private education, given the amount of information already available? If the non-UPA political class always displays a degree of uneasiness about the next president, can it be explained only by losers8217; grudge? Remember in this context that K.R. Narayanan was president when the NDA was in power but despite his clear Congress background the BJP never could suggest the highest constitutional office didn8217;t inspire basic confidence. If the UPA falls victim to the anti-incumbency rule in 2009, how will the interaction between the non-Congress government and the next president pan out? If 2009 produces a fiendishly complex verdict and it falls to the president to take a call on whom to invite first to form a government, will that decision pass the test of inspiring public confidence? Congress leaders are supporting their candidate now but who can defend a president? Surely, the I038;B minister can8217;t call a press conference in the wake of another revelation after the next president is installed?

All this leads to the most important question: should the Congress have a rethink? The party has a day to do it. But what the Congress does today will determine in very important ways how the Republic fares in the next five years.