India, July 23 -- Exactly 40 years to the day, the country gave itself a chance to revive its dead and putrid moral spirit and give its politics a new ray of hope to flourish beyond petty politicking. Eleven months after the catastrophic Operation Bluestar and anti-Sikh pogrom, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed a rather extraordinary Memorandum of Settlement with then president of Punjab's only regional and predominantly Sikh religious party, Shiromani Akali Dal. The Punjab accord, inked on July 24 in 1985, marked a break from the past as this was probably the first time ever since Independence that a constitutionally elected Government of India had entered into a formal accord for the resolution of a conflict in a strife- torn stat...