The Dauphin and the Figurehead

Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led…

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Friend in Need

The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…

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The Wages of Wrath

On January 18 the strike by 2.5 lakh textile workers in Bombay’s 60 mills will complete a year; 25,000 of these workers in eight mills…

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Great Stress Test

It’s good we now have a GST, but its design is another matter Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and…

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Anna Data

Our government owns one of the world’s biggest databases. What does it mean? Annadata means “Bestower of food” – a synonym for god. In some…

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Jaat Kahan Ho

Some day extraterrestrials will thrill to Raag Bhairavi in outer space   Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill…

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Off the Blocks

For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…

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