As I write this, the first day of the debate on the confidence motion in the Lok Sabha moved by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself has just ended. Like the usual suspects, the fors and againsts spoke pretty much on their party lines... some for ideologies, others for power equations. But one person who has stood out in this time of stating and defending for me, is the Prime Minister himself.
Right from the time, when he first stated that he was confident of going through with the deal, Left or no Left, while on board the flight to G8 summit, to his speech today in the Lok Sabha, it's been another facet of the low profile Sikh, that we have come to see. The government might not survive tomorrow, the deal might be accredited to the next one that comes to power, presumably with someone else at the helm of affairs, but what I'll remember the Prime Minister for in all this muddle is for having moved a confidence motion, while the opposition was still busy deciding what way to go, for making the government fall from grace.
And while, his detractors may go on pouring heaps and barrels about how he has been the Great Gandhi family's latest Congress pawn, the fact will always remain that he has always had his moments, small and far flung as they might have been in this age of coalition politics. If the government has finally broken free of the Left wing shackles, its only because the Prime Minister preferred a policy decision to chair.
How do you decide, which way is the right way to go at crossroads. Asking for advice is not a bad option but then, you might not always be advised what your heart had wanted to do. And if your heart does have a say in your decisions, its always best to fore go the advice, in fact its better to fore go asking for an advice entirely, and go for what you feel is the right thing to do. And how do you feel that? Well, a friend of mine says, when you make decision that lets you be you in the particular situation, you've made the right decision. I haven't tried it much, because the wants of this world don't let me be me too often. Or maybe I find excuses to stay away from being me...
The Prime Minister has made a nice effort of being himself, and a confident one at that, and i wouldn't like to see it going in vain... waiting for tomorrows results... with my fingers crossed.