Fishing in troubled waters

Against a background of chronic political and economic instability in Italy, the marines have acquired a mythic status

Italians, like Indians, tend to be clubby. Whatever their differences of class, region and politics - and these are great - they tend to gang up when they see their national pride under attack. That's perhaps the reason Italy's foreign minister, Giulio Terzi, who's a career diplomat, not a professional politician, resigned this week over the Italian marines' return to India, citing his desire "to safeguard Italy's image abroad".

He didn't even bother to inform his boss, caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti, who, in the same mould, is a lifelong economist and technocrat and newcomer to electoral politics. That's just part of the Indo-Italian mess and the incomprehensible sinking sands of Italian politics.

Like Indians, Italians regard their politicians as either a national headache or a national entertainment. The Italian election in late February - which India's Supreme Court in its bountiful goodness allowed the two jailed marines to attend - got the country nowhere. Silvio Berlusconi, often portrayed as a centre-right 77-year-old "senile and sex-mad" media mogul, failed to get a majority after 10 years in power; the centre-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani didn't make it either.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and the election threw up successful oddballs like Beppe Grillo, a white-haired TV comedian and incessant blogger who won an astonishing 25 per cent of the vote. Mr Grillo is a maverick, a sort of Anna Hazare on steroids, who heads what he calls the "Five Star Movement". The movement advocates that all politicians charged with corruption, tax evasion and crime should be thrown into prison. He organises rallies called "V-Day Celebrations", the "V" standing for vaffanculo, which means "F…Off!".

Italians get sentimental, emotional, passionate and continually enraged about their country. Like us, they curse their politicians and gesticulate a lot. A friend from Kolkata, carefully booking herself in to attend concerts and art shows in Rome last summer, arrived in the midst of both a power cut and taxi strike. "It was fine after 24 hours," she said. "It's just another Third World country. There's a black market for everything. I felt completely at home." I once asked a fellow passenger on Trenitalia (a network more Byzantine than the Indian railway system) during Mr Berlusconi's heyday how the government was doing. "There," he said pointing to the train lavatory as he passed round plastic cups of white wine, "Down the toilet!"

The downfall of Mr Berlusconi's profligate policies and scandal-ridden government in November 2011 brought in a caretaker government of supposedly apolitical bureaucrats like Messrs Monti and Terzi committed to electoral reform. Their austerity measures - jacking up property taxes and introducing pension cuts - have proved deeply unpopular. A touching example of this is a YouTube clip of Elsa Fornero, economist-turned-labour minister, breaking down over the word "sacrifice" as she announces social welfare reforms. Italians hated her for statements like "jobs cannot be demanded as a right" but loved her weepie. Meanwhile, men like Mr Monti and the outgoing foreign minister Mr Terzi have developed political ambitions - the latter, who led the campaign to hail the returning marines as heroes, is said to be backed by a right-wing party.

Against this background of chronic political and economic instability, the marines have acquired a mythic status. Italians nurse a double grievance against their government: first for its failure in bringing them back, and now for returning them. The glacial pace of Indian courts in Kerala and New Delhi in deciding who will try them, and when, as well as the Italian ambassador's unapologetic, tempestuous statements have fuelled the controversy. Both have been fishing in troubled waters.

But for a close, upfront look at the marines, you can drop in at one of the best-known clubs in the capital - the members-only restaurant of the Italian Cultural Centre set in a pleasant garden at the Italian embassy. There, under the budding pilkhan trees, Signori Latorre and Girone can be seen lunching off chef Ritu Dalmia's delicious menu.