Let us hear India

Saturday will be a decisive day for our nation,declared speaker after speaker at the Ramlila grounds,and in one way they are at least slightly,correct. It is a decisive occasion for Parliament to recapture the initiative. We need to be able to say,after the debate is done,that finally the richness of Indias experience with corruption,and the varieties of opinion on how to deal with it,have been heard instead of the your-draft-or-mine game that has played out so far. Our political parties cannot disappoint by descending into excessive wrangling or political manoeuvring: they must keep the debate elevated. It is good,for example,that the main opposition party appears unlikely to force a vote on the issue. What is needed is for those who are angry and disillusioned with Parliament,who feel that it is a body unable to take decisions on this matter because it is compromised or ill-equipped,to see a Lok Sabha that is willing to debate the issues in an informed and serious manner. There is no other way to respond to the sort of dismissive contempt that is floating around,much of it from the stage at the Ramlila maidan.

It is important to remember what is at stake on Saturday. It is not,as Team Anna would have it,the possibility of getting a handle on corruption that will require effort,another wave of reform,and legislation that but includes a strong Lokpal bill that has been produced with sufficient input and considerable deliberation. No,what is at stake is the confidence that some in urban India have in the ability of the institutions of state to deliver,and reform,governance. Under UPA 2,which has chosen to neglect the urban constituency that swept it to power,the distrust of institutions has only grown,and this must be remedied. And the effort to remedy it must come from all parties,for no party benefits from a public climate in which politics is roundly condemned.

The prime ministers speech on Thursday,and Rahul Gandhis speech on Friday,together with points made by the leader of the opposition in both houses earlier,show that our parliamentarians share a sense of the urgency of the occasion. We must restore the credibility of politics and governance, Arun Jaitley had argued. That restoration can only come in the highest location of politics in the land,which is the Lok Sabha. And it must start today.