The only Indian president I can claim to have known personally was Kocheril Raman Narayanan, the tenth president, holding office from July 25, 1997, to July 25, 2002. He was previously India’s ambassador to America when I worked in Washington D.C. as a journalist and we often dined together at his home in the company of his delightful Burmese-born wife, Usha.
In view of the revival of the controversial issue of “one nation, one election”, I reproduce below an analysis which I penned when the Narendra Modi government raised the issue. Five years later, the essay is perhaps more relevant today than when it was first written.