Calcutta -The City That Refuses to Die
Nowhere else in India do people engulf you as they do in Calcutta. From the moment you step off your train or plane, and begin…
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Prime Minister Morarji Desai
‘Is Drinking A Ritual “? Then I Think ‘It Is Better to Close Our Diplomatic Missions!’ The appointment is at 1 pm at the Prime…
Low pay, poor conditions fuel unrest in Philippine Military
4 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 4, Reuter – Low pay and poor working conditions have fuelled unrest in…
Anti-strike Force Planned, Labour Minister says
14 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 14, Reuter – The Philippine government is considering setting up a special police…
Modi Unlimited
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
India’s Skilling Field
From The Editor “Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture…
Mayday- At The Hindustan Times
Senior Editor of this newspaper were about to sit down for their evening news-planning meeting when the smoke alarms started jangling. Within moments the first…
STC-Anatomy of A strike
Inscrutable are the ways of public-sector trade unions. The Federation of the State Trading Corporation Employees’ Unions (FSTCEU) lived up to this image when it…
Madhya Pradesh-Making of a Martyr
While it lasted, last fortnight’s nine-hour hostage hold-up in Congress(l) Member of Parliament Dalbir Singh’s.Delhi apartment generated wild images of urban terrorism on the loose.…
Desert – Greening Of Thar
Lush vegetation in the Thar? Groves jamun trees? Mighty rivers the size of the Ganga and Indus? Seasons of monsoon-like rainfall? None of this is…
Labour – Making a Point
Rarely had an event invited such determined and concerted action by Union Government: When the 24-hour national strike called by the National Campaign Committee (NCC)…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
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…
Suppressing Dissent?
Every dissenter is in a minority of one, and K. Ashok Rao, 36, deputy manager in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), is discovering what it…
Stone Age Shakti
That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…
The Method Man
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya Kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
Most Powerful Women in Business
“In India, I See a Lot More Acceptance of Gender in the Workplace” Do you think the India-US CEO Forum you are a member of…
The Daisy’s Petals
Will we get a Lokpal? Will we not? The answer is blowin’ in the wind It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the…
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…
Hollowing Out
Governments cynically scoop out value from their own companies Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned…
Sell Sell Sell
The government must take courage and embrace privatisation Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced…
Bhag Piyush Bhag
Can the new Railway minister outrun the challenges? Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a…
How to make more with less
Team leader Modi is fishing in a shallow talent pool How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon.…
Glass Half-Full?
Strong, sustained growth is possible—if we don’t trip ourselves up We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not…
Viral Fever
The only antidotes to fake news are truth and commonsense Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our…
Red-Letter Days
Many anniversaries this year, but few happy ones This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important…
NaMo the FMCG
Merchandise, tourism, a board game, a biopic, a web series … If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned…
Vulture Culture
Social media –and mass media– fuel a horrific cycle of evil Psychopathy. Voyeurism. Sadism. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to…
Off the Blocks
Get set: Campaign 2019 will rivet, horrify and confound you For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s…
Hell For Leather
Shutting Kanpur’s tanneries has not helped the Ganga much Hell for leather means to run very fast, but the leather industry in and around Kanpur…