A modern day historian I love to read calls India a ‘salad bowl’ nation. The same wise guy points out that our currency note has its denomination written in seventeen different scripts. Yes, seventeen! Each representing a separate culture with its distinct heritage and history. And the rupee only touches the outer layer. Scores of diverse languages, customs and most significantly, mindsets, spill over if you only scratch the surface of this land of ours. And, We, the Indians, have always been conscious of our separateness. So, isn’t this ‘idea of India’ as a unified whole, kind of bizarre? Indeed it is. Yet, the nation has survived, and remained more or less unbroken, in all these eventful 64 years. I think the credit goes to the Indian Constitution, and the amazingly flexibile systems and processes that it provides us.

Now the bad news. The government that we have built around this fabulous framework is not so perfect. In fact it has glaring snags that are getting worse. Partly because the Legislature bungled, partly because the Executive failed, and partly because the Judiciary dithered. Hey, we the electorate must own up, too. The Constitution also handed us the immensely powerful tool to make a change, right?

Anyway, the collective botching up has turned waves of protests into a massive tsunami. What do we do now? Use the Constitution cleverly and wisely to tackle it, of course. In recent times, some pretty progressive laws have been served up using this 64-year-old framework. Let’s do it again and show the world…