Staggering from the start

After the exit of the ‘UPA’s troubleshooter-in-chief’, Pranab Mukherjee, there was eager anticipation as to who would fill in his seat (Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha). In this regard, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s debut has been far from impressive. On Thursday, amid a debate on the Assam violence in the Rajya Sabha, he did the unthinkable: He tried silencing actor and MP Jaya Bachchan by casting doubts on her understanding of the subject at hand: Ethnic violence. "This is a serious matter, not the subject of a film," he said. This led to an uproar, and he was compelled to apologise afterwards. The day before, in his very first speech on the Assam violence, referring to Bodoland Territorial Area District, he mispronounced territorial, ludicrously, as terrorist. His all-too-frequent fiascoes have earned the title ‘Shinde's shindigs’ from the Opposition.