When it comes to building statues, buying big ticket defence equipment or, for that matter, spending money on legislators to defect, there is never a shortage of funds. But if a fraction of that money has to be spent on healthcare or education, each paise is carefully calibrated, complex accounting is done and the government throws up its hands.
Political strategists of President Trump are said to be getting very uncomfortable with the fact that Biden is getting stronger in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the three states Republicans managed to get by a narrow margin in 2016. The particular worry for the Republicans is Biden’s ability to garner Unionists, an indication that the empty scare tactics of the Grand Old Party are not making any inroads.
Notwithstanding the momentary pain, hopefully the lockdown duration was the right strategy and it really flattens the curve. Otherwise the consequences of an extended lockdown could be dire, particularly from a compliance point of view, as has been proven in countries like Italy, shows a latest research by a group of economists.
What goes around comes around. In January when coronavirus was spreading rapidly, the US President Donald Trump lavished praises on China and its President Xi Jinping. All this changed in March when Trump started making the point that if only China had confined the virus to one area.
The numbers rose slowly at first. So did the rumours. There were whispers that a few people have spread it in some private parties. And before we could realise, a huge wave came crashing down on us, much like the novel coronavirus.
The US is already paying a huge price for their President’s inept, almost comical, handling of the coronavirus pandemic. There is a lesson for India from the US tragedy — don’t let Trumpidity define your coronavirus strategy.
Wah, Modi ji, wah! You really are a genius. This morning you appeared on national television at exactly 9 o’clock and asked all of us to light candles and torches for exactly 9 minutes at 9 o’clock this Sunday (April 5). Wow! 9, 9 and another 9. Like a trail in teen patti.
It is official! We are in a global recession.
That the global health crisis has morphed into a global recession was driven home last weekend by the International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. This round would be worse than the previous recession during the financial crisis of 2009, she warned.
A day before Goldman Sach...
A few days ago, a cruel question popped up on some WhatsApp accounts: What if humanity were a disease and the new coronavirus a vaccine against it? In response, someone shot back: What if God is complicit in punishing the “virus” called humans?
From deploying drones to monitor the movement of people in congested areas to launching dedicated fact-checking websites to tackle fake news and misinformation campaigns, the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are using myriad technology tools in their fight to check the spread of coronavirus.
India is committed to the global fight against COVID-19, and so had decided to lift the ban on 14 drugs, including those used for treatment of COVID-19, according to top officials in the government.
The lifeline of the two southern states, the much-abused Cauvery river is now reportedly flowing free — with clear waters and sparkle — something not seen in many years, thanks to the shutdown of polluting industries and free flow of effluents into the water body.
Narendra Modi is one leader who enjoys immense public goodwill. It will be in national interest if he considers forming a ‘government of national unity’ with representatives of a wider spectrum of the polity till the coronavirus crisis passes.
These are unprecedented times. More than one-third of the global population is under complete lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 which has already touched 600,000 lives with a death toll of over 26,000.
Kolkata: The government, anticipating the hardship migrant workers would face by such a sudden and prolonged shutdown, should have made arrangements to take these stranded people home, as many states, including West Bengal, did to facilitate intra-state movement of migrants during lockdown period.
The amazing resolve that the world’s governments have shown in four quick weeks has to be strengthened to wage the more serious battle of addressing the gigantic scales of physical and chemical transformation of materials.
The ongoing lockdown in India is turning into another demonetisation experience — a farce that is unlikely to produce the desired result, a tragedy likely to destroy the lives of millions of people and the economy, and an incident that has all the hall-marks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style of functioning.
Apartment associations and gated communities across the country have sought to cocoon themselves fearing the marauding coronavirus. In their over-enthusiasm, excessive zeal or the chance to wield raw power, many have imposed their own rules ostensibly to enforce the ongoing nationwide lockdown. In doing so, it may just be possible that some of them...
Only some two weeks ago the man seemed to be on a roll. He got over bruising losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, stunned his political opponents in South Carolina and went on to crush them in the Tuesdays of March 3, March 10 and March 17.
With the need to ensure social distancing and lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have been forced to go online, with their staff working from home, to ensure functioning. What was earlier a conditional scenario has now become the standard.
About 10 years ago, long before the advent of the “coronisation” prelude, the MD of an MNC...
If United States President Donald Trump famously called the coronavirus pandemic a “hoax” until his country was rudely shaken by a spike of infections, his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro termed it a media-fuelled “fantasy” only to find his personal secretary test positive for Covid-19 the next day.
Nobody can put a finger to the financial cost of the pandemic, but the US government’s decision to give $2 trillion package (almost a tenth of its GDP) is a good indicator of the extent of intervention required.
Now that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has got his corona thaalibration, can we expect him to come up with a serious strategy to deal with the pandemic? It is becoming more and more apparent that Modi’s only solution to a problem is turning it into an event through mass mobilisation.
Coronavirus may not be entertainment but it India should be grateful to the world of entertainment for making it mainstream. And singer Kanika Kapoor should immediately be announced as the poster girl—maybe Baby Doll, in deference to her famous song— of the current epidemic.
Did the global community leave the doors wide open to the deadly coronavirus despite warnings by the scientific community on possible pandemics due to unknown strains of the virus? A reading of transcripts from past scientific meetings and research archives indicates so.
As the days go by and the number of COVID-19 cases go up, the cracks are already beginning to show in the rickety Indian healthcare system – suspected patients are being asked to remain in isolation wards that have no basic facilities, checking at airports and public transport terminals are inconsistent at best and chaotic at worst.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is known for his penchant for unexpected disruptions, leading to fear and anxiety every time he announces plans to address the nation. But, on Thursday (March 19), when disruption was expected and even warranted, he let the country off with just a mild sermon.
The central government and former chief justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, who was sworn in as a member of the Rajya Sabha on Thursday (March 19), after being nominated by the President, albeit amid criticism, have a duty to answer four pertinent questions:
Does the act of nominating and accepting the nomination as Rajya Sabha MP, within fou...
The nomination of Justice Ranjan Gogoi, former Chief Justice of India (CJI), as a member of Rajya Sabha by the President of India appears to have been well worked out by both the incumbent and the Union government.
The Union government led by Narendra Modi seems to be waking up to the fact that it cannot be perpetually ‘doubting’ the citizenship of its own people. The government has not explicitly said that it would go back on the CAA, NRC, and NPR.
Responding to an RTI application seeking a copy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s citizenship certificate, the PMO promptly replied that he does not need such a certificate as he is a citizen by birth according to Section 3 of Citizenship Act, 1955. So far so good.
Is film actor Rajinikanth testing the waters by indirectly projecting Kamal Haasan as the chief ministerial candidate of his front?
This is the question uppermost in the minds of political parties and observers as Rajini appears to be reluctant to join the race for chief ministership while limiting his role to party chief.
The Rajini statemen...
Super Tuesday Two was as good, if not better, for Joseph Biden than Super Tuesday One of March 3, 2020; and if the present momentum holds yet another Tuesday, March 17 may finally set the stage for the crowning of the former vice president as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate to take on the incumbent Donald Trump in November.
For a p...
Indian astrologers believe two shadow celestial entities play an important role in every person’s life. The story goes that these entities sprang from a demon who drank amrit—the mythological elixir of life —during the churning of the ocean and was decapitated for it by Lord Vishnu.
The Congress party, witnessing the disintegration of its government in Madhya Pradesh, resembles Tesla’s self-steering car – with no driver at the helm and some backend machinations working furiously to keep it on the road.
Living in the age of the new coronavirus is like playing the Russian roulette. It is true that the virus will not kill everyone, but nobody can predict which unlucky person, like in the roulette, will get the only bullet in the chamber. So, theoretically, everyone in this world is at risk.
The decision by the Geneva-based United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to file an intervening application before India’s Supreme Court in the cases that seek to examine the constitutional validity of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) in many ways is unprecedented.
The BJP machinery has revved into action. Congress legislators from the state have reportedly been flown into the Sangh Parivar territory of Bengaluru and the by-now déjà vuesque sequence of events are starting to unfold.
If further proof was ever needed that the world indeed is a small place then this is it. The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in China’s Wuhan city, the epicentre of the virus, is such that the world is now on notice. This is a contagion in ways more than one.
For all those pundits who had started writing the political obituary of Joseph Biden, Super Tuesday of March 3 would certainly have come as a jolt. Biden not only hammered away at the opposition but went on to get 10 out of the 14 states including all of the south.
The United States has signed a peace deal with the Taliban, after a 19-year war of attrition. So, who’s the winner? Obviously it is the Taliban. The US, leading a pack of major military powers, has been unable to remove from the equation the Islamist group and the former Afghan ruling party.
“Mamata Banerjee is opposing a law passed by Parliament. But, nothing can stop us from embracing our immigrant brothers. Tell Mamata didi she is ruining the legacy of Rabindranath Thakur, Mahatma Gandhi...” For those of you who missed his goli-maaro rally in Kolkata, this is the gist of Hindutva-icon Amit Shah’s speech at Kolkata on Sunday.
The legal fraternity was shocked when, by a midnight notification, the Government of India transferred Justice Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court within hours of him pulling up the Delhi Police for its silence on hate speech by four BJP leaders.
Gully Boy impressed critics and audiences alike; India sent it as the official entry in the Best Foreign Language category at the 92nd Academy Awards. The fact that this movie won 13 Filmfare Awards should, therefore, come as no surprise.
Amidst the spectacular roadshows, and big-ticket arms deals during the Trump visit, the proposed mini-trade deal between the US and India has gone into limbo. Considering India’s annual trade of $88 billion with the US and annual US trade volume of $4.2 trillion, a mini trade deal worth $10 billion is no big deal.
The common people of India strongly believe in three things: a) Documents like voter ID, ration card, or school records are sufficient if ever they have to prove their citizenship, b) the CAA is only meant for illegal immigrants, and c) the NRC will help identify the immigrants and pack them off to their countries.
Once upon a time, the colloquial wisdom in Delhi suggested it was better to eat, drink and be merry because whatever else people had would anyway be taken away by the Iranian invader Nader Shah. We may, fortunately, not have been born in Nader Shah’s Delhi. From what we are witnessing today, it can easily be presumed that it would not have been too different from Amit Shah’s Delhi.
The optics surrounding the just-concluded visit of United States President Donald Trump indicates India is an important ally for Washington. Important ally, yes. But there is a limit to how much influence India wields over the US.
Unlike governments in the past, the Modi sarkar is clearly betting on a second term for Trump. It is still not clear if the Modi government is backing the right candidate — the race, according to polls, is tight but Trump’s graph is showing an uptick — but it is certainly doing its best for the current incumbent.
It is not always that the Supreme Court of India, the highest court of the land, appoints interlocutors to negotiate and moderate a protest. This is what the Court actually did in the context of Shaheen Bagh protests on 17th February 2020 setting out mildly the legal and factual matrix for dealing with a protest.
Inciting violence against the state is a crime, but expressing a non-violent opinion is a democratic right. Slapping of sedition charges, in the Bidar case, is an act of unprecedented oppression of expression by police and serious lack of application of mind by the prosecution and adjudicatory authorities.
For most of India, United States’ president Donald Trump’s visit is a spectacle to be watched in passing on a television screen. But for some unfortunates, his arrival is a curse that has overturned their fragile lives and thrown them to the wolves.
The Supreme Court's decision to entitle women Army officers to be elevated to command positions will change the culture of patriarchy that characterises the Indian armed forces.
Every American President starting with Bill Clinton have visited India during their tenure in office; and so will President Donald Trump. Having skipped his Republic Day invite last year, POTUS will be coming to India on February 24 and 25 and spend time in Ahmedabad, Agra, and New Delhi.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)’s decision to shed their pretentions of inclusive politics and explicitly embrace Hindutva ideology is yet another desperate attempt to revive their presence in Maharashtra’s political landscape.
Let’s start by tweaking an old aphorism: When reality knocks on the door, idealism goes flying out of the window. And if that idealism is called Arvind Kejriwal, it flies towards the right, because this is where he can hope to fulfil his dreams and ambitions.
The delay in decision-making at the level of Speakers or Governors has been a matter of debate. In the case of the 11 MLAs, whose membership of the Tamil Nadu Assembly on the ground that they defied the ruling AIADMK whip and voted against CM Edappadi Palaniswami govt on the floor of the House, the matter has been pending for over three years.
Had the BJP managed to win, Shah would have been called the “Chanakya” of politics and the prime minister would have made many subtle appearances on TV, with the cadres chanting ‘Modi-Modi’ in the background. But, for the moment, the Jinpings have found their Keqiangs to deflect the blame.
One of the biggest reasons for AAP’s victory in Delhi is the complete decimation of Congress. From the 10% vote it secured in 2015, the Congress plummeted to 4.5% this time. But, this happened primarily because Congress did not contest the polls seriously, in all likelihood because of a tactical alliance with AAP.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seems to have been forced to temper his criticism of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) after his comments provided fodder for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to try to discredit the protests.
In his reply in the Rajya Sabha, Modi took a shot at the Communist leader, quoting him as saying that certain extremi...
Only the politically very naïve would have thought that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who had been impeached in the House of Representatives last December was going to be convicted in the Senate and thrown out of office.
So what happens to the oil industry which is so wholly dependent on consumption by these ICE-based cars? Clearly projections show that demand for oil in any form will peak by 2021-22 at about 100 million barrels a day. but will go downhill by about 70 per cent by 2030.
While India is in the midst of a turmoil over its Citizenship (Amendment) Act, something of a global charade was unfolding in the United States’ capital Washington DC – where in the guise of a “deal of the century” the fate of Palestinians was being sealed tight forever.
A few days ago, a district administration official in Rajasthan’s Udaipur got a surprise call from Kerala. The person at the other end of the line told the Udaipur official that they need to track down three persons who had flown to India with a Kerala student who had just tested positive for the novel coronavirus that emanated from Wuhan.
The Union Budget 2020-2021 is not merely clueless in both diagnosis and response. It is positively harmful for the people and seriously flawed in its design as well as its data.
The problem with India at the moment is that nobody is buying anything, because there is no money left in the pocket of consumers. And since demand has fallen, the growth rate is down to less than 5 per cent, the lowest in the Modi raj.
Till a few years ago, the BJP wanted everyone to believe it would make their lives better through “vikaas.” Then, once ideas like vikaas and achche din started sounding like vacuous jumlas (slogans), it turned to its favourite bogey — the threat of Pakistan.
China’s coronavirus in an unknown form (novel) is the latest in a series of newfangled viral ailments that have struck the world in the last two decades, created panic, and then disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared.
If politics were cricket, in the 2020 elections for Delhi, the AAP would certainly have been cast as India, the BJP as Sri Lanka and the Congress as one of the qualifiers. For those who do not follow cricket, the simple explanation is this: the AAP would be the favourite to win; the BJP would have an outside chance, and the Congress would be hoping for a miracle.
While Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman was busy serving halwa to her staff ahead of the budget preparations, the Indian Railways was playing culinary politics by dictating what the people of Kerala should eat on trains.
The Christian community has been under flak in Kerala for being silent on the contentious CAA or the NRC. The Synod’s allegations of love jihad could possibly be a way to win favours with the BJP as church groups from Kerala have been active for decades in proselytising tribals in the Northeast.
So, next time we see the children of Shaheen Bagh chanting azadi, let's not forget that in Bapu's fight for azadi, in his non-violent civil disobedience, men, women, and children took part equally. What do we call a Rajkumari Gupta, who managed to supply firearms during the Kakori conspiracy, with her three-year-old son in tow?
The heroes of the protests against CAA, NRC and NPR that are raging across the country are undoubtedly the women of the country. However, the most surprising heroines of this agitation are the ordinary Muslim women who have come out in huge numbers to finally take their place in the sun.
Imposition of the draconian National Security Act (NSA) in Delhi shows the project of turning India into a police state is complete. Or, perhaps we can say now all of India is Kashmir, accept that the jackboots are not on the ground but watching us from a distance.
With Queen Elizabeth agreeing to support the decision of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to “step back as ‘senior’ members of the Royal Family, and work to become financially independent” the so-called Royal crisis seems to have blown over, at least for now.
US President Donald Trump will most certainly veto the restraint, leaving it up to the Democrats to come up with a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to override the veto and make it law.
Responding to Deepika’s gesture of support to the JNU students, Smriti Irani has hit back by arguing that the actor is a Congress supporter (which, in the worldview of the rightwinger is tantamount to supporting Pakistan since the only legitimate option available to a patriotic India is his own party).
The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) is discriminatory on several grounds. It does not promote equality but violates it. It destroys the secular character and Article 14, as ‘religion’ is made basis of discrimination.
For the time being tempers and tension seem to have come down in the Middle-East over the US’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. But this is just another episode in the quagmire that Iraq finds itself in since the US invasion in 2003. No one can be sure what can crop up next and where that will lead to.
When the US invaded Iraq ...
If there is anything more devastating than war, it is war rhetoric. As the world witnesses rising tensions and the nations watch the unfolding of war-like events involving Iran and the US, the rhetoric on both sides seems pumped up.
The intentions of rhetoricians could be multifold – from mopping up support for a cause to amplifying the need for...
There is the creepy feeling in some quarters that had it not been for the riveting testimony of John Dean, Richard Nixon’s White House Counsel during the Watergate Scandal, the former President would never have resigned and would have manoeuvred to complete his term in office.
The India of today has begun to resemble Kuru king Dhritrashtra’s darbar. Its honour, traditions and pride are being disrobed, its students are being attacked and girls are being manhandled with impunity by thugs. And the people responsible for speaking up and taking a stand are watching in silence.
Some of the darbaris of the Kuru kingdom at le...
Attitude of the BJP government towards students’ protests is eerily similar to the way the British government in pre-independent India treated them. Narendra Modi who promised students that they will be stakeholders in the political process has now left them with broken bones. It appears for the British and BJP, protesting students are anti-nationals.
The targeted killing of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani by the US has threatened to throw the already volatile political situation in West Asia in deeper turmoil.
The drone attack on Friday (January 3) by the US near the Bagdad international airport, which killed the charismatic Soleimani, has shocked the Iranian establishment, which has vowed “s...
The United States’ assassination of Iran’s top security official Qasem Soleimani does not seem to have evoked any condemnation from most of the world, as it is by now expected, or taken for granted, that Washington will have its way in any power struggle with a rival country.
For about a week before the dawn of the new decade, the world — especially the United States and East Asia — was on its edge and for good reasons. The North Korean strongman, Kim Jong Un promised a “Christmas gift” to the American President Donald Trump.
The protests against the latest amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955, stand out for their spontaneity, the absence of any identifiable leadership and mark the first time that a decision of the Modi government has met with popular resistance of this magnitude.
The beginning of 2020 is as ominous as the end of 2002—it portends the complete degeneration of India into an authoritarian state where the only instrument of mass subjugation will be hate.
In a major reform of the country’s military leadership, the government has attempted to define the role of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to ensure greater operational synergy and financial management between the Army, Air Force and Navy. Towards this objective, the government will create a new organisation called the Department of Military Affai...
The Jharkhand loss for the BJP is significant because it comes bang in the middle of countrywide protests against the changes in citizenship law. The BJP has lost in spite of the prime minister’s attempt to monetise the controversial law during the campaign in Jharkhand, and his crass remarks on the identity of protesters.
Kolkata: While the ruling dispensation and its digital army are trying to defame the dissents on the streets by giving it a communal colour, the anti-CAA-NRC protests across the country are blurring many old fault lines, at least as of now.
The BJP has ruled so far through fear and its majoritarian agenda, even as its government failed on many fronts. But it knows that the cocktail of a prolonged conflict with its own citizens and a falling economy can be lethal for its longevity.
Whether former Pakistan president Parvez Musharraf is eventually executed or not, the fact that a special court sentenced him to death is in itself stunning. For, such an outcome was extremely unexpected in a country where the military has dominated almost all aspects of political life since its birth in 1947.
The BJP can be countered today only through a sustained attack on its policies that have derailed the economy. Its opponents have to be relentless in talking about the fall in GDP—at 4.5 per cent, it has been sliding for eight quarters.
New Delhi: The recent discovery of the site where Vikram Lander – a key segment of the Chandrayan-2 mission of the ISRO – had hard-landed, by a Chennai-based software engineer has brought into focus an emerging trend of ‘citizen science’.
The phrase ‘nirbhaya (fearless) women’ has become an empty rhetoric, as it has failed to make women fearless. With around two-thirds of judicial officers not presiding in courts, both in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and because of pending vacancies, around 60 per cent of criminal cases are unable to go on with the routine trial.
In such a situat...
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is a kurmi — a backward class that’s almost six per cent of Bihar. Though he hasn’t confessed yet, but his creed must be kursi (chair) — a faith practiced by 100 per cent politicians of India.
Every politician in India flocks to kursi. But, this Ku-Ku, as in NaMo for Kursi Kumar, is a bird of such unique feather...
Last week’s controversial amendment to the Citizenship Act has had everyone scouring the statute books to see if it has in any way altered the “basic structure” of the Constitution.
The BJP loves to thrive on disruptions, chaos, panic and uncertainty triggered by its politics. It always follows the simple strategy of creating a divide, manipulating the majority through hyperbole, fiction and fact, and, by the time people understand its real motive, the absurdity of the disruption caused by it, moving on to something else.
S...
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB), which will soon become law, will turn India into a ‘Hindutva Republic’, and in utter disregard to the secular tenets of our Constitution.
CAB simply means that if a Hindu from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan comes to India to settle with his relatives or friends from whom he was separated in 1947 or la...
Once upon a time in India, its streets echoed with chants of “Bofors ke dalalon ko, joote maaro saalon ko (beat up the middlemen in the Bofors deal with shoes).”
Saudi Aramco’s recent initial public offering (IPO) that helped it raise $25.6 billion, by selling 3 billion (1.5%) of its 200 billion shares, makes it the most valued company in the world at $1.7 trillion surpassing Apple Inc.
The encounter killing of four men in Hyderabad on Friday morning is cold-blooded murder served on demand by the local police to satisfy the blood-lust of a crazed public and its cheerleaders. The purported justice for rape and murder of a veterinarian is, ironically, rape and murder of the justice system.
As a daughter of refugee parents – both my parents moved from East to West Bengal following the partition of India – there are certain staple refugee romanticisms we grew up on since childhood. One of those stories was about their staple diet, panta bhaat. We were told how people in East Bengal ate panta bhaat every single morning for breakfast. Pa...
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the country’s apex food regulator, appears to be running around like a headless chicken when it comes to dealing with junk food. Its actions and words don’t match with regard to its stand on food products considered unhealthy. The regulator has been preaching about eating right and nutritiou...
In a week, India has witnessed at least six incidents of rapes. Although it takes us a ghastly Nirbhaya, a Kathua or a Disha rape and murder case to happen, to wake up to the fact how India is in the throes of a rape crisis, rapes in the country are not as seasonal as the media portrays them to be, in the wake of a sensational case.
Parliamentarians, while demanding tough punishment for those who raped and murdered Disha in Hyderabad, seem to have overlooked how existing penal provisions were violated, facilitating the crime to happen in the first place.
Disha, the name given to the veterinary doctor who was killed last Thursday (November 28) brought back memories of the br...
The hush-hush manner in which India reportedly carried out pushback of 59 alleged illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the wee hours of of Friday (November 29) speaks volumes about the handling of an emotive issue, which is currently dominating Indian politics, particularly in eastern India.
The clandestine operation was in sharp contrast to how 150 ...
It is not going to be easy for the Democratic Party to take the White House in November 2020, not because of an invincible incumbent in President Donald Trump, but because the party is still in the search for a viable messenger and a powerful message.
What started off with some 24 candidates in the fray for the nomination, has dropped down to ab...
Is secularism as a component of political ideology headed for death in India? The coming together of ideological poles in Maharashtra will suggest so.
The last citadel of the Indian version of secularism, the Congress, has all but crumbled with the Grand Old Party readily agreeing to sup with the ‘devil’, the Shiv Sena, in Maharashtra.
The Co...
On the occasion of Constitution Day, in deference to the prevailing culture, politics and morality of India, it is fitting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is exhorting us to protect, preserve and honour India’s constitutional legacy.
Within 24 hours, we would have the privilege of watching the PM’s solemn advice put into practice in Maharashtr...
The way now seems clear for the Shiv Sena-led combine to form government in Maharashtra following the resignations of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and renegade NCP deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Tuesday. But, if this coalition imagines that the path is smooth for the next five years, it is living under a delusion.
All that the alliance ...
It’s all a game of numbers, right? In the end, the ones who score the maximum number of MLAs get to win the Indian Political League. So, why not revamp the entire process, and make it similar to the cricket IPL. Start by creating a pool of people for sale, set a reserve price for them and open the auction window.
Always give your best. Never get discouraged; never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself.
— Richard Nixon’s last address to staffers at the East Room of White House.
Lawmakers, especially those involved in the impeachment of United States President ...
The Babri Mosque-Ram Janmabhoomi land dispute may have reached its climax after a 140-year-long legal battle. But has it really ended? Is the verdict really about ‘equity and good conscience’ as pronounced by the Supreme Court? Was the mob which demolished the mosque right in its claim? Has the unanimous judgment by a five-judge constitution bench ...
For every woman who dares to speak up and is silenced through institutional harassment, there are ten other women watching her journey, and believing that speaking up about sexual harassment is not worth the pain.
For the nincompoops refusing to learn Sanskrit from a Muslim teacher at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), the only fitting advice is the one sung by Lata Mangeshkar to the divine music of Jaidev: Allah tero naam, Ishwar tero naam, sab ko sanmati de Bhagwan. (Allah and Ishwar are both your names, O Lord, give wisdom to everyone).
Apart from bei...
The refusal of the Kerala government to give police protection to young women visiting the Ayyappa shrine reverses the stand it took last year when the Supreme Court threw out a 1991 High Court ban on women of menstruating age from visiting the hill temple. Amid violent protests, it had sneaked in two women into the temple under heavy police protection late at night.
The Babri mosque was more than just a mosque to Muslims in India. It represented the community’s position as equal citizens in the secular, democratic country they had chosen to live in. After its highly visible and violent destruction in 1992, the Babri mosque became even more important because it was the litmus test for justice – whether Muslims ...
Only two factors keep coalition governments alive in India — fear and greed. Smart investors may have noted that these two are the driving forces of the stock markets too, and that’s exactly the point: in the end, both are about maximising returns (greed) and minimising losses (fear).
For India, there is more to it than just a change at the helm in Sri Lanka when it goes to polls for a new president on Saturday. While the presidential elections are obviously important for Lankans, given the new China-centric power equation in Asia, the outcome is crucial to India too which is struggling to regain its once-powerful influence over its island neighbour.
The Supreme Court decision to reject the review petition on the Rafale deal only adds opacity to the defence procurement process synonymous with a history of corruption in the country. Soon after independence, the first defence scandal was over procurement of jeeps from Britain in 1948.
Is Ayodhya really the birthplace (janmbhoomi) of Lord Rama?
A lot can be written about the Ramayana being an epic inspired by myths and fantasies that should not be taken literally. Some historians argue it was written as a counterpoint to the teachings of the Buddha and Mahavira and was meant to be seen as a moral code for rulers, their familie...
Life for Bangladeshi waste pickers in Bengaluru appears to have become like the plastic and paper scraps they collect from the city’s dumps: used and thrown. The city they saved from decay is now disposing them.
A fortnight ago, the police, under pressure from the state and central BJP governments, arrested 60 undocumented Bangladeshi waste pick...
Former Chief Election Commissioner TN Seshan physically exited from this world on Sunday but he must have died a thousand deaths witnessing the dismantling of the strict regulatory system he had enforced in the conduct of India’s elections.
In 1991 when Seshan, a career bureaucrat, took over the Constitutionally-created autonomous Election...
Anand Patwardhan's 1992 documentary, Ram Ke Naam, tracks the right-wing nationalist movement's campaign to build a Ram temple at the site of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. It begins with LK Advani's Ram Rath Yatra and follows the outbreak of riots across the Hindi belt. It explores the mood and ideology behind the movement.
The movement is nothing new...
The apex court, putting an end to the litigation over the birth place of Lord Ram paved way for construction of temple as dreamt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).
At the back of his mind, Rajinikanth is well aware of the BJP’s limitations in a state dominated by regional parties like the DMK and the AIADMK, and other Dravidian forces. Like in Kerala, the minorities have voted in large numbers against the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP has every reason to be happy with the Supreme Court verdict, allowing a Ram temple to come up at the disputed Ayodhya site. If it needs to thank anyone for this turn of events, it is its arch-rival, the Congress party.
Less than expected, the results of the Maharashtra assembly elections might have caused headache and embarrassment to the top brass of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but it is the Congress leadership that needs to deal with a chronic migraine and uncertain future.
This may be a hard one to swallow, but the fact is India does not appear ready to get into free trade agreements with bigger powers, like in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and benefit from them.
‘Kyoun bhi kehna jurm hai
Kaise bhi kehna jurm hai’
(To ask questions is a crime here, to ask why and how is also criminalized.)
When renowned Italian writer and survivor of the Holocaust Primo Levi passed away, The Guardian paid tribute to him through the following words, “The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers…...
Followers of Indian politics must have noticed that the BJP has not exhibited its characteristic brag-and-bully brand of politics in Maharashtra since the results threw up a mixed mandate.
A recent Government Order (GO) issued by the Andhra Pradesh government threatening to initiate criminal prosecution against media persons for “false”, “baseless” and “defamatory” news items raises apprehension on the government's intent.
Given the pendency in courts and delay in dispensation of cases, there is every possibility to fear that the ...
Argentina’s unemployment climbed to 18%, further jumping to 39% in 1996-97 which was said to be the poorest decile.
To curb the turmoil, the Argentinian government introduced a reformed wage for work programme with the assistance from World Bank (Trabajar II) which provided temporary work for those who sought it, at relatively low wages — set ...
It is strange that the BJP picked up Thirukkural as a vehicle to boost a Hindutva campaign in Tamil Nadu, given the Kural’s (a poetry meter comprising two lines) emphatic message that all human beings are equal at birth and professing values like universal brotherhood.
If there’s one individual who should be happy with the Modi government’s actions on Kashmir, that must be Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan. For, the BJP-led Indian government has managed to do what Islamabad has been striving for many years — to internationalise the Kashmir dispute.
First, it was the United States' president Donald Trump, wh...
The Karnataka high court recently directed the Police Establishment Board to clarify if the transfers and retention of police officers were made on the recommendation letters given by 21 MLAs, for posting police officers of their choice in their respective assembly constituencies.
The Court observed that “both the state government and the Police...
The states’ autonomy over their Information Commissions was destroyed as the Union government was determined to take away the independence of the State Information Commissions all over India.
The Indian government’s move to allow a delegation of European Union members of parliament into Kashmir amounts to “internationalising” the issue, something that upends a long-held policy of maintaining the dispute as a bilateral issue with Pakistan, no more no less.
Donald Trump’s favourite reply to any question on any subject under the sky—economy, Iran, terrorism, nukes, women, Ukraine — is usually this: “Nobody knows it better than me.” Let’s take this claim on face value and put a few questions to the omniscient President of the US states.
1) Who created Daesh, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria?
2)...
Defeat of the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in the last Assembly elections has opened up space for the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) in Andhra Pradesh, but the saffron party does not seem to have made much progress so far.
Like in other southern states where the regional political culture had taken deep roots, Andhra Pradesh cont...
You’ve got to give it to Shah for two stellar qualities. One, he is clued into the history and dynamics of not just people, but also entire families and states. Two, he has made elections redundant in India. For, whatever be the process, in the end it is always Shah who wins.
People are the new Opposition, that’s the overarching message that comes out of the results of Maharashtra and Haryana elections. In both the states, the Opposition had capitulated to such an extent that it was displaying no will to put up even a decent fight leave alone a contest.
The Indian government appears to be moving beyond diplomacy into the realm of arm-twisting to express anger at two friendly countries — Malaysia and Turkey — for their pro-Pakistan position on Kashmir and for supporting Islamabad at the recent FATF meeting in Paris.
Unlike in the past when Indian governments would react diplomatically, the curre...
Advances in computing and communications technology is making possible a new business model where companies engaged in selling seeds, traits and crop protection products may charge for outcomes.
In a few hours from now, news channels will tell us what we already know about the ongoing round of elections—that the BJP is sweeping both Maharashtra and Haryana. Whatever be the individual numbers, the BJP tally is likely to be humongous in both these states.
In a move reminiscent of Vietnam, United States President Donald Trump has ordered the withdrawal of troops from embattled Syria, defeated in his attempt to oust President Bashar al-Assad. The US exit has left Syria in a deeper mess than when it needlessly intervened in that country.
That Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee would receive the Sveriges Riksbank Prize for the Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel in their lifetime was never in doubt. That Michael Kremer would join them to receive this honour is unsurprising. That it should have come so soon is a matter of considerable surprise, since it is rare for winners to ...
In sports, it is often said that you need to focus more on the process, and the results will have no choice but to follow naturally. In politics, sometimes it is the end that justifies the means. With regard to the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) in India, a bit of both was at play as Sourav Ganguly was elected president, unopposed.
Clearly,...
It is tempting, as many have attempted, to compare the ongoing uprising in Hong Kong and the siege-like situation in Kashmir after the removal of special status. At most, there are points of similarities and elements that tempt comparison, but they are dwarfed by the many differences between the two.
Social media went abuzz after the Modi-Xi meet at Mahabalipuram finally came to an end, debating whether or not casteism was on display during the cultural programmes presented specially for the occasion.
Singer TM Krishna triggered the debate with a post in which he said from what he saw, it was clear that discrimination of the arts and its pra...
America is yet to recover from the rancor in the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election where nearly everyone, excepting of course the President, was convinced of Russian meddling to the advantage of Donald Trump.
On October 9 the Senior Superintendent of Police, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Manoj Kumar Sinha closed a sedition complaint against 49 celebrities for writing an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticising the unhealthy atmosphere prevailing in the country over gruesome lynching incidents. A first information report was filed at Sadar police st...
My earlier piece on Keeladi, which said that the excavations have raised more questions than providing answers, has stirred up a hornet’s nest. There are many hornets buzzing around trying to sting me and those who agree with me. Not one of them, even the archaeologist who carried out the excavations earlier, Mr Amarnath Ramakrishna, has chosen to ...
If you thought India and Pakistan competed only in the cricket field, you are wrong. In politics too, the two rivals seem to be elbowing each other for the attention of world leaders like Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
If life gives you a Rafale, use it to make lemonade. Unless Rajnath Singh believes in this old adage, it is kind of surprising that he stopped at sacrificing just a few lemons while taking delivery of a magnificent creation like the Rafale in Paris on October 8.
He is a populist leader who is using nationalism to divide the country into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ for his own political gains. He has tried to tear down democratic institutions and broken the law in the bargain but refuses to apologise when caught, using offence as the main form of defence.
Opponents are called ‘traitors’ and his inflammatory language...
Anyone well-versed in realpolitik will know that nations ultimately look to see what they gain in a relationship and both the Indian and Chinese leadership over the last several decades have demonstrated this in a variety of ways.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have warmed the hearts of Tamil enthusiasts with his “love” for their tongue and cuisine, but lurking underneath is an intriguing dalliance with Hindi, a language that his government is trying hard to promote at the expense of other languages.
US president Donald Trump is two-timing between the two South Asian rivals, Indian Prime Minister Modi and Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan since the US needs both.
The three bills introduced by the BJP-led NDA government in 2019 – River Basin Authority Bill, National Dam Safety Authority Bill and Inter-state River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill – dilute state’s rights over the river water and concentrates decisions in the hands of the Centre.
Though water is state subject, inter-state rivers and river val...
Just before his bilateral talks with Donald Trump in Washington on September 23, Pakistan’s prime minister gave the world a peek into his psyche that seems tormented by regret over his country’s doomed romance with the US.
On Sunday, while Donald Trump was listening to paeans in his praise by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Houston, the intrepid US press was busy digging details of his scandalous conversations with the Ukrainian president.
Modi’s Houston event is being held in the backdrop of the decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status. The international media, especially the press in the US and London, has been brutally critical of the Indian decision and its impact on the life of Kashmiris.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the butt of plenty of jokes these days. One of them envisions her at a bank without an ID. Asked to prove her credentials the FM pleads her mind is completely blank and she has absolutely no clue what to do. The cashier immediately identifies her as the finance minister blessed with the ability to do nothing, ...
The irony of extended conflicts is they invariably move out of the front pages and media attention thereby receding from public memory. Until a major development yanks them back into the limelight – like the drone attacks on the Saudi oil fields that made the world sit up and take notice.
The oil market is in a tizzy, prices have gone up and que...
A number of micro economic factors like the advent of more fuel efficient automobiles, and transportation in general, better infrastructure and growth in alternate sources of energy like solar have resulted in continued lower oil prices.
If you have been following Modi, you would know what is the purpose of life —to stay in the news. Or, even better, be the news, create the news. Except for media, everything else is just maya.
Never mind the economic gloom in India, unsettling political events in Kashmir and the NRC fiasco, Indians now have something to look forward to: the September 22 “Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures” event at Houston in Texas.
“There is nothing wrong if Chandrababu Naidu is shot in the middle of the road for all his misdeeds,” YSR Congress Party supremo Jagan Mohan Reddy had said, while addressing an election rally at Nandyal in the faction-ridden Rayalaseema region in August, 2017.
The shocking outburst in full media glare reflected the nature of rivalry between the ...
A few days ago, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman was asked an out-of-syllabus question on the impact of the decision to roll back of the surcharge she had proposed on the foreign portfolio investors in her Budget.
The minister first fiddled with a water bottle, perhaps in a bid to remove its cap, which, rather fittingly for the occasion, ...
“The power of transfer is a highly dangerous power involving great hardship and, injury to the judge transferred including a stigma on his reputation in cases where the transfer is not effected pursuant to any policy but the judge is picked out for transfer on a selective basis and to my mind, it makes no difference whether the transfer is made by ...
Eighteen years ago, on this day, the world took a sharp, unexpected and irreversible turn.
The al-Qaeda engineered attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, while puncturing the aura of invincibility of the global superpower, and managed to awaken “the sleeping giant” for the second time ...
Three days after ISRO failed to land Chandrayaan-2 “softly” on the Moon, news has started filtering out that it was indeed a success. Despite the inability to carry out the soft landing, which was the most important element of the exercise, it now appears that it should still be considered a success as Vikram, the lander, which crashed on the moon from around a kilometre in space has been located.
Amaravati: YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh is a shining example of how a smashing electoral victory does not necessarily entail good prospects for the development of a state.
A hundred days in the saddle, the young chief minister has offered little to cheer about the fledgling state. A slew of decisions that smacked more of a political ve...
History, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once poignantly said, would be kinder to him than the media. He might have been rephrasing the old argument that some people are born ahead of their time and, thus, not fully understood by their contemporaries.
Apparently, people themselves are refusing to come out in protest despite lifting of restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir, though it is not clear whether there is an organised effort behind the self-imposed boycott.
After Assam, it may well be the turn for Telangana to play out bitter politics over undocumented immigrants. The state BJP unit has demanded that the National Register for Citizens (NRC) updation be replicated in Telangana, the country’s youngest state.
The saffron party, which is making desperate attempts to make inroads into Telangana, has lat...
Since unreal times call for unreal measures, the time is real right for some out of the bed, er, out of the box ideas for reviving the Indian growth story. Here are some suggestions with the tongue firmly where it belongs.
For Pakistan, the Indian move which abrogated Article 370 in August 2019 to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), punctures its political prestige vis-a-vis India and more importantly its people.
If the pain of leaving the mortal world without setting his foot in the Valley were not enough, Mohammad Ali Jinnah would have been turning in his grave at the Mazar-e-Quiad in Karachi listening to paeans for Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi in his own backyard on Friday.
August 31 will be a “dread”-letter day for lakhs of people who will see if their names figure on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. For those who will not be on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) overnight their status will be open for questioning — creating uncertainty, tension and fear for their future in India.
The governm...
The intervention of the chairman of Press Council of India (PCI) in a writ petition filed by the executive editor of a Kashmir daily, challenging the restrictions on media movement in the Valley in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370, has elicited sharp criticisms from the media fraternity. While such a step taken by the PCI chairman, without...
US President Donald Trump’s crib that his country, though 7,000 miles away, was fighting terrorism in Afghanistan while neighbouring Pakistan had done little and India had done nothing about it hides more than it reveals.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi created an unnecessary scare about India’s population exploding in his Independence Day speech. By mixing it up with patriotism, he provided an opportunity for the communally-minded to indulge in minority bashing.
The very next day, according to news agency PTI, the Shiv Sena gave vent to prejudice in its mouthpiece,...
When the CM leaves on his UK and US tour on August 28, the simmering differences will be too obvious as Palaniswamy is not inclined to have OPS take over in his absence, though it would be only for a few days. Instead, he is planning to have a team of three ministers to handle any exigency while he is away.
Had paradise existed anywhere in the cosmos, Mohammad Zahoor Khayyam would have been its principal music composer. He would have sat in the middle of it with a dholak, a jal tarang or a flute and created its mellifluous sounds, rhythms and cadences. Khayyam would have been the sound of the music played in the Gardens of Eden, he would have been god...
Eighteen years after the Taliban government in Afghanistan was violently ejected from power by the United States-led coalition, the radical Islamic group is set to make a political comeback — a development that does not bode well for India.
On October 7, 2001, when a United Nations-empowered coalition swooped on Afghanistan in retaliation agains...
In his sixth Independence Day address to the nation from the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the setting up of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) post over the three military chiefs.
However, controversy characterises the creation of a CDS, considering that the move has been opposed for over two decades due to inter-services rivalry...
The United Nations has been a bit of a paper tiger since the days the US started getting its way in geopolitics. When the US started pounding Iraq, dismantling Libya and meddling in Syria, the only legitimate arbiter of world’s conflicts has been just a notice board for countries willing to resort disputes through their military might.
Once the ...
Chennai Police could be the pioneers in deploying face-detection technologies on a large-scale. But deployment of these technologies is neither limited to Chennai now, nor is it confined to facial detection.
With almost all states, except some northeastern states, now deploying the technology and the government seriously considering the request ...
The biggest peg, on which hangs the BJP government’s decision to neutralise Article 370 and scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, is integration. Now that Article 370 is all but gone, Kashmir is “fully integrated” into India, goes the argument of the BJP, its mentor RSS and all their supporters. And not just supporters, even some in the opposit...
If India attacks Pakistan, if the conventional war is going against us, we would have two choices. One would be to act like Bahadur Shah Zafar and give up without a fight. The other would be learn from Tipu Sultan and fight till the last drop.
Was it coming? Some would claim they were the first to predict. They got it right only partially though. They could not imagine the government could actually repeal the controversial Article 370, granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and go on to bifurcate the state to the extent of downgrading the status of a full-blown state to a centrall...
Three men, guided by myopic agendas, notions of muscular nationalism, and inspired by the pursuit of power at any cost, are steering the destiny of India, a country of nearly 1.3 billion people. India should be extremely worried.
The tools being employed by these men are simple but lethal. They are preying on the two most primal fears of humanki...
Article 370 is dead. The article that gave special rights to Jammu and Kashmir has always been a bee in the bonnet of the political right that wanted the provision to go.
Finally, the BJP has had its way in doing away with Article 370 of the Constitution which gave special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. More than the act of neutralising the contentious piece of legislation that was part of the Indian Constitution for seven decades, the manner in which it has been done raises questions over the robustness ...
Practically speaking, the existence of Article 35A in no way affects Indians in the rest of the country. Scrapping it too is not going to benefit anyone. Even if some see benefits, the negatives far outweigh the positives.
Going by the BJP’s plans to emerge as the main challenger to the Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, one would have expected his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to strongly oppose some of the contentious bills passed by Parliament recently.
However, KCR, as the Chief Minister is popularly known, sprang a surprise by supporting the RTI ...
As developments regarding the alleged suicide of VG Siddhartha, the founder and owner of Coffee Day Enterprises, unfolds, it is becoming extremely clear that the charges of harassment claimed in a letter written by him, may just be the tip of the iceberg.
BJP MLA from Bangarmau in Unnao, Kuldeep Sengar was suspended from the party long ago and remains under suspension, Uttar Pradesh BJP President Swatantra Dev Singh clarified on Tuesday. Seems to be a clear afterthought after the Unnao rape case, in which this MLA is a prime accused, hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons yet again.
It happe...
For those who find the issue of triple talaq complex, the easiest explanation is in the 1980s BR Chopra blockbuster originally titled, ‘Talaq, Talaq, Talaq’ but was later released as ‘Nikaah’.
The good-natured gesture of newly sworn-in Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and former chief minister Siddaramaiah in posing for a “friendly” photograph masks the tensions, acrimony, bitterness and rivalry that preceded the return of the BJP government in the state.
After 13 years, Karnataka will have a government at the centre and state ...
On Sunday (July 28), a speeding truck hit a car, critically injuring the Unnao rape survivor and killing two of her aunts while they were on their way to Rae Bareli.
The rape victim who is battling for life in the Trauma Centre of a Lucknow hospital had alleged in 2017 that she was raped by BJP lawmaker Kuldip Singh Sengar, a four-time MLA from ...
What Shashi Tharoor is to the internet generation, Jaipal Reddy was to the pre-liberalisation generation: a walking Thesaurus, an eloquent speaker with felicity for English expressions that leaves any audience awe-struck.
The septuagenarian Congress leader, who passed away in Hyderabad on Sunday (July 28), was known for his rich repartee, provoc...
Chennai: If the Parliament is the microcosm of the nation, then Indians need to hang their heads in shame. The impunity with which sexism and misogyny continue to be practised in the 'temple of democracy', may not have a parallel anywhere in the world.
Samajwadi Party’s MP Azam Khan delivered the latest on Thursday (July 25) during the debate on the trip...
In December 2001, soon after the attack on Parliament in New Delhi, the militaries of India and Pakistan were on an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation across the border. A wrong move by either could have resulted in a major war. Intervention by the then-United States President George W Bush doused the fire and the troops were pulled back.
This w...
Thank god for 'kar nataka'! For Indian hearts bleeding after the loss in the semi-final of the cricket World Cup, it was a godsend, a manna-esque morning after pill that cured the Old Trafford injury. 'Kar nataka' started a lot like IPL though. Its hallmark being the trademark transfer of players from one side to another before every session, er, edition.
Fourteen months and seven attempts since May 2018, the BJP on Tuesday finally managed to oust the ruling Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition in Karnataka in a protracted act of political aggression that leaves in its wake a trail of detritus of parliamentary norms and the democratic process.
The political coup of sorts, where at least 15 rul...
The Union government has usurped the power of the legislature by amending the Right to Information Act 2005.
The RTI Amendment Bill 2019 also takes away the authority of States to decide the term of a State Information Commission. It has replaced the term clause with an expression “as may be prescribed by the Centre.”
This means that a State ...
Kashmir is like the holy grail of diplomacy. Almost every politician with an imagined or real stake in the dispute dreams of finding a solution to it and, thus, becoming immortal in the hallowed annals of history.
The quest has singed many politicians and statesmen in the past. It ruined Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy, shattered Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s...
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar seems to be heading towards a serious crisis in the wake of the Bihar police ordering an investigation into the activities of the RSS and its 18 affiliates.
The BJP treats the RSS, its ideological mentor, as the “mother organization” and thus, it can be well imagined how much the investigation order has unsettle...
Sheila Dikshit started as a reluctant politician, as an aide to her father-in-law Uma Shankar Dikshit. But over a period of time, she emerged as a leader in her own right. She not only managed to negotiate the complex and treacherous ways of Delhi politics adroitly, but also mastered the art of governance.
Imagine a middle-aged man standing outside the grand Vidhan Soudha building in Bengaluru and thinking aloud about the goings on inside the hallowed premises. I or for that matter anyone else won’t blame him if he wished to see them all out.It’s been weeks since an unseemly drama started in Karnataka.
The proposed Kartarpur Peace Corridor between India and Pakistan, a product of Track Two Diplomacy between the two South Asian neighbours, is a welcome step to increase people to people contact and thereby ease tensions between the two neighbours.
The Kartarpur Peace Corridor will allow Sikhs visa-free access from India to the Gurdwara Darbar Sa...
The part II of the draft policy which covers the important segment of higher education is in fact most disappointing. It waffles unendingly about liberal education and its supposed benefits. It is so full of shibboleths that it reads more like a pamphlet than a serious policy document.
Breathless verbiage
For example, read this: “Higher educati...
United States president Donald Trump is proving to Indians it is not easy to be in a relationship with his country. The latest round of trade talks between senior officials of the two countries have ended, expectedly, with no result. The tug-of-war, meanwhile, continues.
The issue is, on paper, fairly simple. The US wants India to reduce, if not...
A maverick with words and the bat – during his cricketing days – Navjot Singh Sidhu’s political career is like an interesting seesaw T20 match, just that, in his case, the 55-year-old plays the batsman, bowler, fielder and the umpire.
“Wickets are like wives – you never know which way they will turn,” is one of cricketer-turned-politician’s famo...
If Navjot Singh Sidhu were a brand, spinning a tagline for him would have been a cinch for copywriters. Without a shade of doubt, without a breath of dissent, the choice would have been unanimous: Le phad (Punjabi for I quit).
Because, le phad, is what Sidhu does every few months. Le phad is what Sidhu says every time his ego is hurt. Le phad, a...
Politics has given the Congress-JD(S) coalition a lemon in Karnataka. Together, like true optimists, its leaders are trying to make a lemonade out of it. And the Supreme Court status-quo till Tuesday (July 16) on the resignations by rebel legislators has added a bit of sugar to their efforts.
It is clear by now that the Congress-JD(S) government...
The ongoing political drama in the fittingly named state of Karnataka is a moment of deep shame for Indian democracy. The theatre of absurd, replete with themes of betrayal, treachery, greed and conspiracy, is exposing the ugly, dark side of India’s politics and the vile characters who have come to dominate it.
The theatrics point not only at th...
As the political drama in Karnataka unfolds, the Constitutional role of the Speaker, to accept or reject resignations, becomes crucial for further course of action, which will script the health of democracy.
However, as much as the onus is on the Speaker, MLAs too are equally responsible to uphold democratic and constitutional values. It seems t...
In 2019 February the Karnataka Speaker disqualified then Congress legislator from Chincholi, Umesh Jadhav for defecting to the BJP as per the 10th schedule of the Constitution. But, recently Jadhav became a member of the Lok Sabha after contesting the Gulbarga Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket. What could be more ironical than the fact that a disquali...
The chief economic advisor to the Union ministry of finance, Krishnamurthy V Subramanian, has continued the practice initiated by his predecessor Arvind Subramanian in 2014, of presenting the Economic Survey in two volumes, together with a separate volume as a Statistical Appendix.
This format had been inspired by that of the World Economic Outl...
The US Senate recently accorded North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally-like status which is a major milestone in India-US relations. The formalization of India’s association with the NATO alliance from an Indo-centric national security and foreign policy perspective amounts to a burial of Nehruvian non-alignment that was against entanglemen...
In her Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the country would go back to the basics on one count — agriculture — with zero-budget farming. She called it an innovative method that must be scaled up, and appreciated states like Andhra Pradesh which were training their farmers to take up zero-budget farming.
But, why go back to t...
What is most frustrating about the draft National Education Policy (NEP) is that its recommendations are scattered throughout the text and it is quite a task to identify them. There is no summary of recommendations anywhere in the text. An addendum titled ‘The Way Forward’ enjoins both the central and state governments to implement some of its reco...
Now that Rahul Gandhi is officially the ex-president of the grand old party of Indian politics, the Congress seems to be on the crossroads of extreme confusion.
Can Congress survive without a Gandhi on top?
Can a non-Gandhi face lead the Congress?
Is Congress headed towards a complete disaster without a Gandhi at the helm?
Who could b...
In its latest and largest ever drug haul, the Department of Customs seized 532 kg of suspected heroin worth ₹2,700 crores, on June 30 which was smuggled into India from Pakistan in a truck through the trade route via Attari border. The consignment of heroin and another 52 kg of suspected mixed narcotics was concealed under hundreds of bags of rock ...
In earlier times, the Union Budget was seen primarily as a statement of estimated annual receipts and expenditures of the government of India. Over the years, the Budget presentation has become a media event, and the finance ministers in their speeches defer more than willingly to this reality, by spending a good part of their speeches on announcem...
It was nearing midnight as she walked home alone on the poorly lit streets. She didn't seem to mind the dark though, she continued talking to amma about work and eventually put down the phone to enjoy the walk. As she was about to open the gate of her house, she heard a whistle. Startled, she turned around and there he stood, in the middle of the r...
In her maiden Budget speech, finance minister quoted an Urdu couplet, Chanakya sutras and Vivekananda’s sage advice. But, her real message was hidden in a Tamil verse from the Sangam-era work Purnanuru.
“Just a few mounds of rice cooked from a small piece of land is enough for the elephant. But if the same elephant enters a paddy field it will end...
Rahul Gandhi’s political journey so far can be seen as a confused attempt to traverse the varied paths of his father, grandmother, and grandmother, and embracing the ideology of his great-grandfather.
Now, he wants to emulate Mahatma Gandhi.
Capturing a career that spans 15 years in a few lines is difficult. But, a few broad themes can be see...
Guiding a nation to transit from one thought process to another is always tricky. The leadership has to deal with legacy issues and find ways to break the mould and inject a new thought. As human beings we are wired to play safe when it comes to breaking new grounds.
Agriculture in India largely faces that dilemma and I would like to describe it...
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is right about demonetization. In fact, she is always right. As defence minister she was right about the Rafale deal, which, she said could be held up as an epitome of transparency, honesty, and anti-cronyism. As commerce minister she was right about, er, well about everything she said and even about what she lef...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday (June 2) said that arrogance and misbehaviour will not be tolerated in the BJP, no matter who the person was or whose son he/she was.
The stern message comes days after Indore MLA Akash Vijayvargiya, son of party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, made headlines for thrashing a municipal official duri...
The Narendra Modi government is keen to have simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and all the state assemblies. But, the proposal needs an informed debate on its pros and cons before the government takes the idea further.
The idea of One Nation One Election (ONOE), simultaneous elections, was first made in the annual report of the Election Co...
You can never take nataka (drama) out of Karnataka. The two, like conjoined twins, seem united by birth and destiny. So, in true nataka style, two Congress legislators quit the Assembly on Monday. And, in this theatre of absurd, you can already hear the Doors singing, this is the end, my beautiful friend.
Oh, and since HD Kumaraswamy is in the U...
In 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised his government would strive to double farmers’ income by 2021-2022. Commentators like agricultural economist Ashok Gulati had cautioned that the goal is ambitious and impossible to achieve. But isn’t it good to have an ambition as the adage ‘if you aim for the moon, even if you miss, chances are yo...
If there is one glaring take away from the G-20 summit in Osaka it is this: the United States is nobody’s friend. Talks of allies, relationships, deals and friendships end where the US’s interests begin.
Take the example of the US’s closest ally, Britain. Notwithstanding all the talk of “eternal friendship” US President Donald Trump has been acc...
Two recent judgements from the Supreme Court (SC) have far-reaching implications for labour rights but they leave the question of federal rights on a related issue in the grey area. In a landmark judgement on April 30, 2019, the Supreme Court allowed trade unions to initiate insolvency proceedings against a company on behalf of workers whose dues w...
Chennai: Everyone is screaming about water crisis, especially in Chennai, pointing their fingers at someone else. Look at Cooum and Adyar, these rivers did not turn into big drainage canals overnight! We did not hear any screams, did we?
Let us step back and analyze what led us to the current situation. Understanding the problem is the first step to solv...
The noisy criticisms being made by some political parties on the three-language formula — a routine and hardly implementable recommendation made by the Kasturirangan Committee — are insincere and crassly chauvinistic. The formula is being carried around like a millstone by successive committees on education from 1966 onwards and this committee is n...
The two-day G-20 summit starting in Osaka, Japan, on Friday (June 28) is crucial for reasons unrelated to the multilateral meeting. If India is watching to see whether the United States will back down on its belligerence on the issue of tariffs, the world is keenly awaiting the outcome of the talks between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese ...
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is going through the worst phase of his political career. The man who was once credited with the 'turnaround' of Bihar and heaped awards for his good governance is now being questioned for his 'gross administrative failures'.
Strangely, this has happened in his second innings with the BJP. What can be seen as an...
Nice guys just get carpets, not the World Cup. And who would know this better than West Indian fast bowler Courtney Walsh.
In 1987, Walsh had his team knocking on the doors of the semi-finals of the world cup. Snared by the opportunity, Walsh stopped for a brief moment. And then, instead of walking through the door, he turned back with a wry smi...
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s current visit to Delhi, the first face-to-face interaction since the Modi government returned to power, gives a chance for India to sort out difficulties that have cropped up in the relationship but, realistically speaking, is unlikely to lead to any solutions.
Pompeo met Prime Minister Narendra Mod...
It is a coincidence that the Chief Election Commissioner’s (CEC) rejection of an RTI request for disclosure of dissent, in violation of fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) (a) of the Constitution, clashed with the 44th anniversary of Emergency in India.
In his speech in Parliament on June 25, Prime Minister ...
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is known for fiery debates on TV channels. However, on June 21, 2019, he was not at his articulate best on the floor of the Rajya Sabha when he tried to put up a brave face saying that withdrawal of tariff concessions under Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) by the United States—which came into effect from 5 June...
Like vultures which eat away every bit of the flesh leaving only the skeleton, the country’s full-service carrier, Jet Airways finds itself in a similar situation.
The beleaguered airline currently cooling its heels at NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) may have nothing to offer to potential investors except its brand name. Considering the fac...
The recent Pa.Ranjit-Rajaraja Chola controversy caused quite the outrage and led to numerous historical accounts and debates on the king who ruled some thousand years ago.
Before I start with where I stand with respect to what happened, I want people to understand my socio-political leanings. I believe in equality, social justice, feminism and w...
The recent utterances of the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi asking the judiciary to resist populist forces are an indication and general perception that there is increased threat to the independence of judiciary.
Earlier this week, speaking at a conference of Chief Justices at Shanghai Cooperation Organisation at Sochi, Russia, CJI Gogoi hi...
Say Karnataka and the first question that comes up is: how long will the government last?A month after the Lok Sabha election results, the ruling Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) alliance is still to recover from a shock performance that saw its numbers touch a new nadir.
Of the 28 seats, each got just one, the remaining going into the Bhara...
There are just two types of cinema in this world. One is a reflection of our society, interpretation of something its makers may have seen, perceived or felt in the world around them. The other is a celluloid avatar of human imagination, an attempt to give form to a fantasy that is removed from the limits of reality.
That brings us to Kabir Sing...
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which had lured three MPs from the YSRCP in 2014-19 has now lost four of its Rajya Sabha MPs – all businessmen - to the BJP now. The development will change the colour of politics in Andhra Pradesh.
Some BJP leaders have openly stated that several of TDP’s 23 MLAs were in ‘touch’ with them and soon there would be an...
“You can’t throw a yoga mat in New York without hitting someone coming out of a yoga session”. This quote by writer JR Thorpe in Bustle.com says it all. The ancient Indian-engineered system is today found all over the world. From serious practitioners to fad followers, everyone is attempting to figure out their own versions of yoga.
On top of it...
In the 2015 elections, Patna’s roads were adorned with the promise of a Bihar spring with some clever alliteration. “Bihar main bahaar ho, Nitishe Kumar ho,” the Janata Dal (United) prophesied in its poll campaign.
Four years later, the promise of a state in bloom has been replaced by the image of a fertile ground for a mysterious illness that’s...
There is a two-thousand-year Tamil poem from Purananuru which exhorts the students to learn using all means. ‘Give your teacher good money. Help him in need, don’t get angry with him and don’t be impertinent with him. Your purpose is to learn,’ it says. The poem underscores the point that education had always been valued highly in India and there h...
In the middle overs of the recent India-Pakistan encounter, while Virat Kohli & Co were piling on the runs, the cameras zoomed in on the mug of the Pakistani captain, the affable and pleasantly portly Sarfaraz Ahmed.
Bang in the middle of the most-awaited contest of the world cup, standing right behind the stumps, Ahmed’s let his jaw drop a ...
The Persian Gulf resembles a chess game, but with a difference. One wrong move by either of the two primary players — Iran or the United States — and the board will blow up. The world is watching the spectacle unfold, hoping it will end without necessitating a bloody conflict. Unfortunately, one major observer who can make a difference is letti...
Why should doctors across India strike work if angry relatives of a dead patient hit a doctor in a Kolkata hospital? Ideally, the victim should file a police case, let the law take its course and nobody else should be made to suffer. But, why put the gun to the entire country’s head? Why let patients across India suffer, even die, to make the gover...
Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee prides herself as a product of protest. She never misses an opportunity to remind how she doggedly fought the once mighty and well entrenched Left Front, and vanquished it.
“Amake andolan dakhaben na. Aami andolan theke toiri hoyechi (Do not teach me about protest. I am a product of such protest movements),” she is often heard sa...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who recently met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit at Bishek, have agreed to expedite dialogue on the India-China border dispute to find a “fair” solution to the almost intractable problem. Considering China is India’s largest trade partner since 2013 the two neighbours al...
Kolkata: The four-day long healthcare crises in West Bengal deepened further on Friday (June 14) with around 200 doctors of state-run hospitals tendering their resignations citing the “prevailing situation”, a day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee intervened to break the logjam.
Many more doctors are expected to follow suit, said a senior doctor-profe...
Bengaluru: There was a time, many years ago, when a pilgrimage to the Hindu holy town of Varanasi was considered a dangerous journey with the elderly never sure whether they would return to tell their tale. But today that is not the case. It is safe to travel, especially by trains. Or is it? The death of six passengers due to a heatstroke inside a train casts...
India’s first ever space war exercise designated IndSpaceEx scheduled for July 2019, highlights the need to checkmate adversarial space-faring nations from the militarisation of space.
Space technologies have military utility related to communication, reconnaissance and navigation. The 1991 Gulf War and thereafter, the military campaign over Kos...
‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'
When Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong had coined the phrase, Bengal was nowhere in his mind. But it is in this state that his political philosophy has been finding resonance, with a little tweak, for decades as a powerful means to establish political supremacy.
At least 13 people -- seven...
Amaravati: During the 3,400 km long padyatra across Andhra Pradesh that propelled him to power, the YSR Congress Party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was moved by the plight of farmers. One of his first set of assurances during the mass contact programme was that his party, if voted to power, would provide direct cash benefit to farmers to meet their investm...
If you believe in coincidences, India’s victory over Australia should be a valid reason to stock up on the champagne. In the history of the cricket World Cup, every time India have beaten the Aussies in the first encounter between the two teams, they have gone on to win the tournament.
Even if you don’t believe in coincidences, the win should be...
“I have not come here as a politician. I’ve come here as a brother, as a son, as a friend.” Thus spake Rahul Gandhi during his visit to Wayanad, soon after taking a call that he needed to look beyond Amethi, for whatever reasons. During the thick of campaigning in the sweltering heat of April, the oft heard refrain was whether the Congress presiden...
One of the defining moments of Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s career was the open bus journey he and his teammates made on the roads of Mumbai after winning the 2007 T-20 World Cup.
Dressed in a white shirt, his famous tresses being gently swept back by the afternoon zephyr, Dhoni leaned on the railing of the open bus throughout the ride. While everyone...
Five years of Modi government at the Centre has had its share of hits and misses. But two big misses that it should own up is increased joblessness and poor economic growth.
The government which had been refusing to share unemployment data in the run up to elections suddenly announced on Day-1 of its second term that the unemployment rate was 6....
The United States and Europe are watching with trepidation, instead of eager anticipation, the emergence of 5G technology in the mobile Internet space. The reason for the concern is because China is leading the way in implementing the 5G network which is expected to make a quantum jump in mobile communications and related technology.
For China, ...
If Nitish Kumar’s political story were to be written in one word, betrayal would be the apt choice for it.
Backstabbing is the defining theme of Kumar’s politics of three decades. He has been both its beneficiary and victim. It is the defining trait of his political equation with everyone who has had the mixed fortune of allying with him. From L...
The Cauvery Water Management Authority’s order to the Karnataka government to release 9.2 tmcft of water to Tamil Nadu has put the ball in Karnataka’s court and eventually in the Centre’s court. If the BJP is serious about expanding its support base in Tamil Nadu, it will be hard for it to pass the buck on Cauvery.
The combined storage in the fo...
There isn’t much difference between BJP’s eagerness to promote Hindi across India and its desire to rile Mamata Banerjee with chants of Jai Shree Ram. For the party that currently runs India’s government, Hindi is part of its dream of achieving what members of its alma mater, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, call ‘sanskritik ekatmavad.’
The phra...
There has been much discussion (mostly, statements of opinions) in the media on the economic agenda for the new government in India. There has been plenty of advice on the imperative to privatise just about everything, and more or less to hand over the economy and policymaking in that sphere to the corporate sector.
Protecting the farmer’s incom...
New Delhi: Narendra Damodardas Modi has begun his second innings with a bang at the majestic forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhawan on Thursday. His swearing-in ceremony as prime minister for the second consecutive term was a spectacle with 6,500 invitees, the largest ever, watching the event.
He took the oath of office and secrecy with the colourfully lit re...
Till a few years ago, Amit Shah had a favourite pastime. He would sit in a room with a couple of TVs and constantly flip channels. When not watching news or election rallies, he’d switch to saas-bahu serials that once dominated Indian airwaves.
Today, if you look back at it, Shah’s own life resembles a soap opera that’s had more twists and turns...
One of the most memorable and important stories related to the making of a Union Cabinet is from 1980. When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, it was widely speculated that Mohan Lal Sukhadia, the Congress stalwart from Rajasthan, would hold the number-two position in the government. Sure about his prospects, one of India’s leading English da...
India’s neighbourhood and the international political scene are far more taut and tense now than when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government first took office in May 2014. The challenges in foreign policy therefore for the new government are far more complex and crucial.
Take Pakistan first. In 2014, the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif wa...
Those who know the Ramayana would agree going into the kop bhavan (sulking chamber) can have disastrous consequences. In the epic most Indians know by heart, Dasratha’s favourite queen Kaikeyi recedes into her private quarter to express displeasure with the king’s decision to anoint Rama as his successor. Her act sets off a chain of events that lea...
Yes, I was expecting Mr Modi to return to power, but with reduced numbers. My expectations were belied and the victory he has achieved is stupendous and almost without parallel. In the initial years of independence, Nehru won similar victories, but the opposition to him was not as antagonistic as it was in the case of Modi. In the case of Indira Ga...
Rahul Gandhi should step down as president of the Congress not because he ran a poor campaign in the 2019 elections. He should go because India is just not ready to listen to him. A politician who can’t even make himself heard, even when he talks about the welfare of the people he seeks to represent, has no right to a leadership role.
In the 201...
After a torturous seven phase elections, spread over six weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is back with a bang with an increased majority.
A triumphant Modi delivering his second victory speech Thursday evening pledged that in “national interest he would take along everyone as the trust reposed by the electorate places increased respon...
Let’s face it. The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) did not work in the just-concluded general elections, results of which are scheduled on May 23. It ended up largely favouring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah.
The MCC is a good-intentioned, well-meaning set of guidelines that is in...
From WhatsApp to Twitter, every social media platform was used to spread fake news, from God to Godse every non-issue became a serious issue, from Pulwama to Balakot, and region to religion, nothing is left for electoral exploitation by ruling party. It was difficult for the Opposition to cope with the variety of strategies adopted by the BJP, wit...
Chennai: The assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur in Chennai on May 21, 1991, impacted the election process only partially as nearly half the electorate in the country had already voted. Polling was held in the second phase after a delay of a few days post-assassination, and therefore it could be said that the Congress deri...
Look at the Congress numbers predicted by exit polls. They read like a telephone number starting with the country code of Bangladesh: 880- 6543214610. These are the projected seats for the Congress in 13 major states of India, except Kerala.
Its highest score is projected to be in Punjab, where it might win 8 seats, and in Karnataka, where it ma...
We were a bunch of fresh graduate engineers. Many had done engineering because only that offered a decent career option in the 1980s. And we had been thrown together because we were soon going to be sent on board merchant ships.
Some hadn’t quite realised what that meant — months, if not years, away from home; living in a closed environment; and...
During a debate at the Calcutta Club in 2017, the BJP’s Sambit Patra made a vociferous defense of the Modi government’s ‘surgical strikes’ using rhetoric appealing to ‘Bengali pride’ complete with recitations in praise of Ma Durga – Bengal’s presiding deity. He received loud cheers from the city’s elite. Emboldened by their response Patra then comp...
A WhatsApp joke doing the rounds goes something like this: The Election Commission will not join the BJP. Instead it has decided to provide outside support to the party.
Though the purpose is to elicit a laugh, the joke is indicative of a deeper problem regarding the credibility of the EC going by its recent rulings which are seen as favouring ...
The prolonged, elongated election process initiated by the present Election Commission has proved to be a taxing and time-wasting exercise with a deep impact on governance in the country, besides depriving voters of an opportunity to deliver a quick mandate.
This is the second-longest election schedule (39 days) since the first general elections...
Bathinda (Punjab): At a rally in Punjab's Bathinda, Priyanka comes on the stage, takes the lantern and says, 'Bole so nihaal.' The rows of men in colourful turbans and women in bright dupattas seated in front of her chant back, 'Sat sri akal'. Priyanka Gandhi reveals a grin that will stay on her face throughout her 20-minute speech.
There are smiles and there is t...
As the United States (US) ratchets up its moves to sequester Iran over the nuclear issue, the rest of the world, including Europe, is just watching on, unable to intervene effectively to douse the growing tension in the Persian Gulf.
The situation is a throwback to 2002-03 when Washington hyped the fabrication that Iraq’s president Saddam Husse...
In any other election, under different circumstances, actor Sunny Deol’s victory from Punjab’s Gurdaspur constituency could have been safely assumed. The constituency, which is just about 10 km from the international border, is tailor-made for the actor whose defining screen persona is of a fearless patriot who vanquished Pakistan in many battles, ...
It can be safely presumed from her filmography that actor Kirron Kher has very little work these days in Bollywood. So, she is utilising her fabled acting skills in politics — behind the camera.
Kher, the incumbent BJP parliamentarian from Chandigarh, is defending her seat against the Congress party’s Pawan Bansal this election. Much of the defe...
The mention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi immediately conjures up the image of a “strong leader”, an individual with a “56-inch chest”, he is macho and can single-handedly change the destiny of India. He is someone to be feared, a leader who cannot tolerate corruption; an authoritarian streak runs in him and if he comes to power now India may...
Narendra Modi went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of voters,
Modi’s jaw fell down and opened his mouth,
And half-truths came tumbling after…
The problem with our Prime Minister these days is that he can barely make an election speech without triggering a burning desire for checking facts. Such has become his propensity for half-truths, hy...
Chennai: The clumsy manner in which the Election Commission has gone about the task of ordering re-polling in 13 booths across Tamil Nadu on May 19 had fuelled rumour-mongering and wild allegations about "manipulation" of EVMs by the ruling AIADMK with the assistance of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre. All that had happened was that empty EVMs were being shi...
In Bhopal, this year’s election is not about choosing a parliamentarian. It is instead a referendum on two competing brands of Hinduism.
One is the Hinduism, rather Hindutva, of Pragya Thakur of the BJP, exemplified by her in-your-face symbolism: flaming saffron robes, rudraksha mala (garland), a huge vermillion stain on the forehead and a predi...
Pulp fiction writer James Hadley Chase named one of his books “Just a Matter of Time” which became quite popular in the seventies. It might just be a matter of time before the Indian airline industry begins to flounder.
India has become a graveyard for domestic airlines. At least three big and six to seven smaller airlines have closed down i...
I request the Honorable Supreme Court to make public the report that gave a clean chit to the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi regarding charges of sexual harassment filed by a former woman employee of the top court for the following reasons.
We don’t know what the truth is! All laws and procedures are in place only to find out the truth. If ...
Rahul Gandhi is a born-again Buddhist. He says he regularly does Vipassana – the meditation technique apparently taught by the Buddha himself.
In Vipassana, one sits and observes one's body. The meditator starts by hunting for sensations in each part of the body from the feet to the top of the head. And over a period time, he or she turns all hi...
If non-Congress, non-BJP parties are nursing an ambition of forming a Federal Front at the Centre, they must start making their moves now.
After completion of five rounds of polling on May 6, 2019 it is clear that BJP is set to lose seats as compared to 2014 elections as there is no visible Modi wave. The Prime Minister’s following seems to be i...
When in Varanasi next, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should walk through the narrow lanes that connect Maidagin — the busiest market of his constituency — to the Manikarnika Ghat. Modi may notice a few things about Indian culture he may have missed because of his busy schedule.
Every day, dozens of dead bodies from across the state are brought to...
If the executive and the legislature violate the rights, the victims look to the Supreme Court for protection. What happens if the apex court itself sets such an example of inquiry and protection to the complainant of sexual harassment? How can a panel of inquiry proceed in the absence of the complainant in the allegations of sexual harassment rais...
"Lok Sabha TV is showing a film on an autistic child at 10 am" was a message from a well-meaning friend on a Sunday morning. Lok Sabha TV. Doesn’t bode well, says a voice inside me. But I try to suppress the prejudice against government channels by dredging up positive memories of Doordarshan’s Sunday afternoon broadcast, in the distant past, of aw...
After over a quarter century of operations, one of India’s largest private airline operator Jet Airways grounded its fleet in April due to heavy debts. India’s state operator Air India is reeling under debts of over ₹50,000 crore. Despite a strong bankruptcy law such as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC), why are Indian airlines unable ...
A five hour journey from Raebareli to Varanasi, on a winding road that passes through silent towns, sleepy villages and several river fronts, shows two Indias fighting the 2019 election in Uttar Pradesh.
One is the India of Raebareli: Quiet, nondescript, rugged and, like the parliamentarian who represents this high profile constituency, missing ...
At a time when many in India are making a song and dance about “nationalism” here comes the Iran test that is going to determine whether their government in New Delhi can walk the talk.
The United States’ deadline for at least five countries, including India, to stop importing oil from Iran is ending on May 2. Three other countries — Italy, Gree...
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Atishi Marlena is living up to her name in the battle for East Delhi. Those who have been following her career know that her unusual surname is a mix of Marx and Lenin, two communist icons her father, a Delhi university professor, idolised.
Her first name is equally interesting and unique. For those not well versed w...
In the sweltering heat of Begusarai, under a blazing red sun, Kanhaiya Kumar usually campaigns in a flaming red shirt. Every few minutes, he underlines the symbolism of his sartorial choice with his trademark salutation delivered with a clenched fist and a raised arm: Jai Bheem, Lal Salaam.
But, the essence of Kumar’s campaign is the Bheem in hi...
“Kanche chenu mesthe” (is a Telugu proverb that means ‘when the fence eats the crop’). When that happens how do we protect the crop from the fence? Among the three estates of the Constitution, the judiciary is the only saviour where wrongdoings of the executive and the legislatures need to be corrected. If the guardians of the Constitution, the jud...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi must have taken the popular description of India’s voter as mango people (aam aadmi) quite literally.
Bang in the middle of a general election, he is regaling them with stories about his fondness for aam. Finally, after talking about Balakot, Pulwama, Hindutva and Pakistan, the PM has brought aam — never mind if it i...
In the run up to the 1991 general elections, an institutional earthquake shook political parties. That year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) woke up from its deep slumber and strode the landscape striking down on anyone violating electoral norms, cutting the weed of corruption, irregularities and tightening the screws of electoral laws that ...
Addressing a rally in Madhya Pradesh, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh tried some Q&A with his audience. He beckoned a young guy in the front row to the stage and asked a simple question. This is how the conversation went. Singh: “Did you get ₹15 lakh in your account?”
The young man: “Narendra Modi struck terrorists in Balakot. What else…”
...
The scale, spread, and intensity of the terror attacks in Sri Lanka, which have left more than 300 dead and many more injured, has been marked with a ruthlessness and elaborate organisation rarely seen in today’s conflict-hit world.
The motive behind the attacks is mystifying, especially since no one has formally claimed responsibility for the a...
