Calcutta Diary

AM A PARLIAMENTARY democracy without a parliamentary opposition can be a bit of a disaster. The goings on in our apology of a parliament in the just concluded session have borne witness to this sombre fact of life. Great moral issues were involved, issues which affect the nation's fundamentals. The opposition, each day, merely parroted what the newspapers said; something got subtracted in transmission, but nothing was added. Shoddy homework, a total absence of both initiative and imagination, horseplay when intense application was called for, and the government got off much more lightly than it had a right to expect or had actually expected.