At the risk of sounding a complete killjoy, I feel there is a compelling case for making serious international conferences joker-free zones. The images of the Copenhagen conference on climate change illustrate the point. At one level, there are fractious, but nevertheless serious, deliberations involving sovereign nations and multilateral bodies. There are also non-official specialists, think-tanks and the media who are observing and reporting the proceedings. And finally, there are those who have landed up in Copenhagen for the sole purpose of providing diversionary photo-ops and making a spectacle of themselves. It is tragic that some Indians — whose sojourn...