BY MANY A HAPPY ACCIDENT (HB)

Fortuitous or not, By Many a
Happy Accident is an account of a life of unplanned happenings that took M.
Hamid Ansari away from his preferred fancy for academia to professional
diplomacy and then be co-opted in public life and catapulted to the second highest
office in the land for two consecutive terms. None of his predecessors,
except Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, had experienced this honour.   Besides chairing the Rajya Sabha and
shedding interesting light on some of its functional aspects, Ansari used the
vice presidency as a formidable pulpit to express himself candidly on a range
of issues at different times in India’s changing political landscape.   Their overarching theme was the need for
modern India to re-commit itself to the constitutional principles of justice,
liberty, equality and fraternity, to the values of a composite culture, and
for correctives in polity relating to identity, security and empowerment of
the weaker segments of our society.