I was wondering about something the other day. For people who are stupid, we say that they lack a brain. Figuratively, we associate a condition with an organ and say that that organ is missing. So if someone is weak and pliable, we say that they lack a spine or a backbone. Someone cruel and inhuman, we refer to as heartless. With the lack of courage, we associate gutlessness. Emasculation has obvious connections. So I was wondering: which organ or part of the body is there an association with ethics? If someone lacks all sense of morality and ethics, what part of the body are they missing?

Apropos nothing, Balbir Punj points out in an op-ed for The Asian Age that the prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh had confessed that he was a slave to the Left parties: “[When] the Left withdrew support, Dr Singh expressed great relief, confessing that he was now released from being a slave of the Left that he had been for the last four years!”

The article is a must-read. Punj points out that Dr Singh is deliberately kept directly unelected. “Even during the five years that he has been the Prime Minster, the party chose to play safe and again got him in through Assam. Was that deliberate to keep him weak lest he gets elected directly and challenges the family’s heirloom?”