Janata Party Tangles

Janata Party Tangles Romesh Thapar SUMMER is on us, and we seem to be entering the silly season. Home Minister Charan Singh's announcement that he has advised the Congress governments in nine states to resign and order fresh elections was so inept that I doubt whether anyone who thinks about the future of our federal polity supports the action that is implied. Lawyers may chalk up endless quotations from British sources, but these lessons drawn for a unitary form of government under a monarchy cannot be applied mechanically to the complexity that is India.