It is two months since the carnage began in Gujarat and the violence continues, so we have the right to ask if there is not some method in the mayhem. Is the violence being deliberately allowed to continue as part of some evil political design? It can be stopped. Peace could return quickly were Gujarat to be put under President's rule. This is also the only solution left if the one lakh Muslims who now live in camps are to ever acquire some measure of normality in their devastated, broken lives. So why has this not happened already? Because, as usual, all our political parties are busy with polemics and politics.

Since the prime minister's speech in Goa it is clear that the BJP takes a Hindu view of what happened. So the local BJP Government is unlikely to do anything for the victims of violence as they are mainly Muslim. But what about the "secular" Congress? If it were really concerned about the plight of Muslims in Gujarat should it not be working in the camps in Ahmedabad and Vadodara? Should it not be organising relief and rehabilitation instead of wasting its time walking out of Parliament and organising protests in Delhi? How is it that even Ram Vilas Paswan, who decided that the horror of Gujarat was too much for him to remain a minister in the Vajpayee Government, is not sending his party workers out into the state's streets to bring peace and harmony? Why is all this being left to the NGOs and other do-gooders who are desperately trying to collect clothes, sewing machines, medicines, school textbooks, galvanised sheets to build shelters and anything at all for the camps? Where are the political parties in this relief effort? Nowhere. Why? Perhaps because there is complicity among them, a covert understanding. They know that the more time we spend on communal violence, the less time we have to worry about India's real problems. Or, to be more accurate, the less time we, the people, have to remind them of the grave problems we face on a daily basis.

Our political leaders spent the 1980s creating problems in Kashmir, Punjab and Ayodhya. There was no talk of secession or plebiscite in Kashmir till Indira Gandhi toppled Farooq Abdullah's government. Does anyone remember that? And Punjab was peaceful, prosperous and doing the bhangra rap until some too-clever-by-half plotters in the Congress discovered what the good Sant Bhindranwale could do for them. So this village preacher of fundamentalist bent, but of little consequence, suddenly found himself being of worldwide consequence and loved it. He discovered how much more fun religion was when it was laced with politics and from then on there was no looking back. Who paid the price for the political cynicism that led to the creation of these problems in Punjab and Kashmir? We, the people of India. Just as we paid for the unwise decision that allowed the opening of those temple doors in Ayodhya and just as we will now pay for Gujarat. None of these problems were insurmountable. Any prime minister with a sincere desire to solve them before they got out of control could have done so, but this is not the way of our political leaders. It is as if it suits them for the problems to exist. So instead of solutions they invent conspiracy theories and bogeymen. In the old days, it was the CIA that was charged with everything bad happening in India, and since the end of Cold War we have become familiar with a new acronym bogeyman, ISI.

Meanwhile, we continue to ignore our real problems. Let me tell you three tales of contemporary India to illustrate my point. An entrepreneur, who I shall call Mr N, came to see me last week. He told me how in 20 years he had gone from earning a couple of hundred rupees a month to having a Rs 45-crore a year turnover from exporting leather garments. Then came a government decision to allow duty-free export of finished leather, and bad times for the Indian industry. He could have survived if he had rid himself of some of his labour or even if he had been able to get a bank loan. But since Delhi's laws forbid owning freehold land in industrial areas, he has no collateral to show to the bank. Besides, he pays 12 government inspectors Rs 15,000 each every month to avoid harassment. And they tell us the inspector raj is over and economic reforms are taking place.

Tale number two is about a man who just came out of Tihar Jail and tells me that more than half the people he met there were in detention only because they could not afford bail. One such inmate had been in jail for six years for stealing Rs 100. So much for our justice system. My final tale is of Devraj, a severely handicapped beggar on Mumbai's Marine Drive who would like to earn an honest living by running a public telephone booth. Despite my help it has been six months since his application got stuck in the bowels of some government office. Can we afford governments that cannot solve our real problems?