Canadian Prime Minister Mike Carney told an audience back in Canada that his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi had told him that he, Modi, had not taken a day off in the last 25 years. The Indian PM, Carney added, went out every weekend to campaign. He then pointed to a Canadian politician and said while he too campaigned and addressed audiences of a hundred people or more, Modi’s rallies are attended by 250,000 people.

That PM Modi works 18 hours a day is repeated by most BJP leaders, and Union home minister Amit Shah is famously said to have declared recently that PM Modi did not even take time off to freshen up for three consecutive days while attending a workers’ meeting.

They do not, however, explain why the prime minister is giving Parliament the miss. While Shah on Wednesday waxed eloquent about the allegedly poor attendance of Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, he did not bother to dwell on the PM’s absence.

The truth is, the prime minister's reluctance to make statements in Parliament is baffling, and shows a contempt that he likely would be loath to admit.

Besides a statement and reassurance on India’s energy security and at least a statement of regret over the US navy sinking an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean on its way home after a ceremonial visit to India, there are at least six other questions that the nation wanted the PM to answer this week:

What is the status of the Indo-US trade deal? The prime minister needs to tell the nation the circumstances and the terms on which India agreed to a ‘framework agreement’ for an interim-trade-deal; and why India agreed to import $500 billion worth of goods from the US in the next five years; why indeed did India agree to impose zero tariff on most imports from........

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