India is so reasonable.

Yesterday the government won the vote on Foreign Direct Investment by 253 votes to 218 in the Lok Sabha because both UP based parties, SP and BSP staged a walkout. That way they supported the bill by not supporting it. Now they can truthfully tell farmers that they supported the bill because FDI will increase their incomes by eliminating middlemen and, at the same time, tell small shopkeepers that they rejected the bill because it will be harmful to their trade. Ingenious. However, the leader of the opposition BJP, Ms Sushma Swaraj had a third explanation for their walkout, saying that their action was governed by their fear of the CBI. " It is not a question of the BJP, this is not a communal issue.....but the problem is the issue has now become FDI vs CBI," said she. TOI, 7 December. Why should such eminently respectable leaders such as Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ms Mayawati be afraid of the Criminal Bureau of Investigation? Does it mean that they have done something or many things that could be deemed naughty? Surely not. " We have never been afraid of the CBI," declared Ms Mayawati and then voted with the Congress today in the Rajya Sabha where the government was in the minority. The SP staged another walkout ensuring the government won. All those who were moaning about policy paralysis have been firmly put in their places. Paralysed people cannot walk out. So there! Question is that if Ms Swaraj is able to accuse such stalwarts of criminal behavior why was Aseem Trivedi bunged into jail on sedition charges for drawing a few harmless cartoons. Why was Ms Shaheen Dhanda arrested for  hate speech for asking why there was a bandh in Mumbai following the death of Mr Bal Thackeray on her Facebook page? The reason is that there are 2 classes of people in India, namely the aam aadmi, which is us, and the khas aadmi, also called " lal battis ", because they go around in cars with rotating red beacons on the roof telling the aam aadmi to get out of the way or get an AK47 jammed up his backside by the accompanying fellows, terrifyingly known as " black cats ". While we are a for aam, which means common, they are k for khas, which means special, with Z+ security. You cannot argue with the alphabet. This was in evidence recently at the funeral of the former Prime Minister, IK Gujral when all of Delhi came to a standstill. Senior Supreme Court advocate, Harish Salve was not amused at being stuck in traffic. He is threatening to file a case in the Supreme Court to stop such practices in the future. " It is clear from the attitude of the Delhi police that it has not shaken off its pre-colonial attitude of serving the Raj - just the masters have changed," he said. TOI, 3 December. He should be grateful that Mr Gujral passed away in December and not in May. Everything has a reason.