Satyameva Jayate runs our national motto. How many Indians realise this quotation from the Upanishads is incomplete? There is a third word there, "nanritam". Truth alone triumphs, naught else. Which is hard to believe as we look back on the year that was!

Turn to the front page of this newspaper, and see what you find there. Will it be more tales of either the BJP or the Congress drenching itself in another stupid scandal? Or will it be another half-baked excuse from a politician caught milking money from an illegal construction? To me, the enduring image of 2005 was the anguished face and voice of Pramila Shanmugam, as she asked the President, "Do you have a plan to ensure that no honest young Indian ever faces the hapless fate of my murdered son?"

Let us be honest, would it make a difference even if the head of state actually possessed such a plan? Given our system of governance, Rashtrapati Bhavan is little more than a gilded cage for its occupants. The president may offer words of solace to the victims of injustice but he can do little more. Or is that right? The very question is now being considered by the Supreme Court. Let us go back a little to Sunday, May 22. President Kalam was on an official visit to Russia. Late that evening he received an urgent fax from Delhi, with the Union Cabinet urging him to dissolve the Bihar assembly that had been elected just a few months earlier. We may never know if there was any further discussion between the president and the prime minister, and if so what was said. All that is in the public domain is that the president signed the papers, Governor Buta Singh assumed full powers in Bihar, and the Election Commission stirred into action once again.

In the long run, I suppose everything turned out well. The dissolution provided just the impetus that the Bihari voter needed to provide a clear mandate against Laloo Prasad Yadav and his cohorts. But there were graver constitutional issues that remained unresolved. Can an assembly be dissolved before it has met even once? Merely on the observations of a governor, a political appointee, who feels that defections are about to take place? And is the Union Cabinet, subsequently the president, bound to accept that advice even if the governor genuinely feels that way?

Inevitably, the question ended up before the Supreme Court. In a stinging rebuke, delivered just before fresh polling began in Bihar, it declared that the act was "unconstitutional". However, it did not halt the electoral process in its tracks, nor did it deliver the reasons behind that judgment. But the mere fact that the apex court had delivered so uncompromising a ruling was enough to set off a flurry of demands, with at least one commentator demanding that the president resign on moral grounds. (The experience was probably what drove President Kalam to make his remark about lessons that had been learned, at the Indian Express conference.)

Two months on, the detailed judgment of the Supreme Court is still awaited. Such delays are not new. There was a gap of a year or so between the TANSI case arguments and the judgment. But Chief Justice Chandrachud did not delay the famous Minerva Mills judgment on the ground that Justice Bhagwati was not ready with his opinion, did he? The problem in this instance is that the delay has given the UPA a fine excuse to dodge responsibility. Every schoolchild who has endured a civics lesson knows that the president acts at the behest of his council of ministers. What does it say of Manmohan Singh, Shivraj Patil, and other honourable men, if the apex court declares that they have acted in an "unconstitutional" manner? At the very least, it suggests that they have broken their oath of office.

Personally, I think there is a case for the Supreme Court to take its time on the matter. There are all sorts of tales being told, about which way each justice voted. Is it true that the dissenters thought the assembly should have been revived? More important by far, this judgment will delineate the areas of responsibility of the president, the cabinet, and the governors. Its impact will be felt long after Kalam, Manmohan Singh, and Buta Singh have left office.

But that still leaves India groping for an answer to a grieving Pramila Shanmugham. Nor does anyone offer to respond to Satyendra Dubey's brother when he asks why nobody has been brought to book for Satyendra's murder after two years. The murders of Dubey in 2003 and of Manjunath in 2005 may have stirred the conscience of the president and prime minister but it has not delivered justice. How can a system that fails to avenge the actual murder of two honest individuals be expected to avenge the attempted murder of democracy in Bihar?

We have endured 12 months that began with a tsunami and ended with MPs mired in scandal. The sole comfort is that we have, surely, come close to hitting rock bottom. A happier New Year to you!

Courtesy: The Indian Express, December 29, 2005