India needs an election right now. In the past two-and-a-half years, we have been witness to mind-boggling scams, shocking drops in governance standards, gross abdication of responsibility by those in power, and a complete lack of leadership at the top – both at centre and states. We need a general election now – and not in 2014 – because such dramatic declines in respect for political authority – as witnessed in the breakdown of law and order in Assam, and the ability of mere scaremongers to send thousands of north-easterners scurrying home – has almost been never witnessed before.