Civil War

UNION Home Minister Prakash Chand Sethi has elevated the art of governance to a fine degree of pettifoggery. Political interference in the bureaucracy is not…

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The Big Squeeze

Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov erected a 50-ft gold-plated statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat, eight years before he gave…

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Low Cost Rules

You won’t get the lounges with pile carpeting, deep sofas, canapés and laptop docks. You don’t have the noise and to-do of Mamatadi’s Duronto non-stop…

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Bureaucracy-The Power that be

All private secretaries to Union ministers are equal, but S.R. Bhatia is more equal. Bhatia is the private secretary to Prakash Chand Sethi, the Union…

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Finding A Voice

Politics cinema, like the new wave of the mid-’70s, has long acquired a pejorative meaning in India. At most, a political film that catches the…

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THE DAISY’S PETALS

It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…

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HOLLOWING OUT

Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned company’s capital to the public and relinquishes management control.…

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SELL SELL SELL

Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs);…

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