NEW DELHI, April 22 -- This election is the moment of final reckoning for our democracy! The choice is stark - between freedom and tyranny! Our situation couldn't be more desperate, what with religious bigots, extortionists, commission agents, protection racketeers and vectors of hate ruling the roost, shored up by lawless enforcement agencies and complicit institutions of governance. Their rallying cry, "Iss baar 400 paar", is the Damocles sword hanging over our benighted land.

Is PM Modi's confidence in winning 400 plus Lok Sabha seats for the NDA combine plain braggadocio? Or is it an assertion of his regime's brute power and dominance of the polity? The editor of a leading daily has ominously warned that the out-and-out victory sloga...