GIFT TAX-All but Abolished

precisely because it has failed. There can be no more telling indictment of the received wisdom on Punjab than the 65th Amendment Act itself. But obviously it is not merely the National Front government that is so charmed by the 'solutions' concocted by the previous two governments. The Congress(I)'s enthusiastic support for the 65th Amendment Act is motivated, apart from the sheer narcissism of it, by the same petty calcula- tions which prompted it to inaugurate the subversion of the democratic process in Punjab in the first instance while the BJP's endorsement of hardline measures is in tune with its atavistic principles. That the Left should lend itself to such disreputable intrigues, designed to profit parties like the Congress(l) and the BJP which thrive on communal divisions runs contrary to the natural logic of their politics. Not only have the CPI and the CPI(M) been as shrill as the others in demanding the postponement of assembly elections, but Harkishan Singh Surjeet of the CPI(M) has played an important role in the new government's replication of the Congress line on Punjab. It is this conspiracy by the major political parties, all of which were routed by the SAD(M) in the November elections, to deny the people of the state the right to elect their state government that passes under the currently respectable guise of national consensus. That it was just such an attitude in the past that contributed to the demand for Sikh separatism appears to be of peripheral significance to the kind of politics that seeks petty gains from continued confusion in the state.