On the day that I write this column, I spend the first few hours of the morning cruising between news channels. It is a necessary exercise. This is a topical column, and I cannot afford to be tripped up at the end of the day by some major political event that makes the subject I have chosen irrelevant. This has happened a few times, so I need to be vigilant. My deadline last week was on the day that the Prime Minister spent more than half the morning at the Statue of Unity celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

India’s first Home Minister is so huge a hero for Narendra Modi that one of the first things he did after entering the exalted power enclave of Lutyens’ Delhi was to order that the tallest statue in the world be built of his idol. So, it surprised me not one bit that it was there that he spent the birthday of Sardar Patel. What did surprise me was that every single news channel was covering this event live from start to finish. It was not as if there was no other news. The day before there had been that meeting between

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