Some young people will never learn. After Shashi Tharoor twittered that the new visa rules would not serve the purpose for which they were promulgated, S.M. Krishna, the minister for external affairs, asked him not to differ with the ministry in public. His words, to the effect that everyone had to fall on the same page, may not convey his meaning well; but he meant that whatever their views, all those who speak for the ministry must say the same thing — presumably the same thing as he would say. He did not mean that he is always right; but he wants no quislings in his empire. However wrong he may be, his army must go down fighting for him — and for his minions who write up visa rules for him.

Down the road from South Block, in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Shiva Ayyadurai was told in October not to talk with or write to any of his fellow scientists; three days later, he was sacked. He was not nearly as stylish or famous as Mr Tharoor, but his crime was similar. He, together with Deepak Sardana, had criticized the CSIR top brass in a report. Unlike Mr Krishna, S.K. Brahmachari, the director of the CSIR, did not take responsibility for the punishment; he said that he was against the dismissal but had succumbed to his colleagues’ pressure. The plight of Mr Tharoor and Mr Ayyadurai shows that those who run the government of India do not tolerate public criticism from their juniors. Their reactions would suggest that the criticism had substance; if it had been silly, they could have laughed it off, or just ignored it. In fact, gagging both the young and undoubtedly bright men was precisely how men with a weak mind or a weak case would react. If the men in power had wished to invite disdain, they could not have chosen a better way to do it.

But however natural it may be, that interpretation would be unfair to them. For they were not acting for themselves, but for the government of India; they share the conviction that the august, 3.5-million-strong institution to which they belong must speak with one voice. They may well ask what the plight of the British government would have been if its 5,000-odd representatives in colonial India had spoken with different voices. British rule, the British then felt, would not last if they did not fall on the same page, in modern parlance. But the reason why it did not last was precisely that they unanimously refused to share power with those they ruled. It is the ruled who rule now; whether a Brahmachari or a Krishna, the rulers rule by consent. And what the ruled consent to must be determined through debate, to which those juniors contributed. If the elders have an argument, let them come out with it.