SOMEONE once said that Ministers of State were “nobodies†because their only job was to reply to questions in Parliament that did not call for a verbal answer: the “unstarred†questions which are on paper and whose answers also come written and are merely placed on the table of the house. In the good old days of single party governance and rule by a supreme leader, junior ministers, as they are called, were handed these jobs with a that’s-all-you-deserve attitude.
