The Don of Dhanbad
Dhanbad’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…
Read more
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…
Garam hawa
India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘Food Prices set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…
Bihar Press Bill-Battle Cry
Whatever else the government is butter-fingered at doing, it is adept at keeping the results of its impetuosity in a state of continuing suspense’. The…
The Opposition-The Games Old Men Play
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
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…
An Heir Splitting Legacy
The story is as complicated as the whorls on a fingerprint, a ready-made screen-play bursting with grandeur, feudalism, pretension, and the tattered remnants of pomp…
Lok Dal-Taken For A Ride
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi Lal reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
Bihar – For Whom The Bill Tolls
One of the misconceptions spawned by the Bihar Press Bill is that it will emasculate Bihar’s journalists. The truth is that Bihar’s journalists have already…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last.” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
Scrabbling Away From the Abyss
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
Cleaning up our act
India is trying to do its bit on climate change At the Hamburg group of 20 summit on 7-8 July, diplomats toiled through most of…
Killing me Softly
Death is inevitable, but not in a gas chamber He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Forget global warming and focus on local warnings Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities…
Waterless World
How melting Himalayan glaciers and Chennai’s dry taps are connected Time was when ‘Glacial Speed’ used to mean ‘very, very slowly’. That has changed forever.…
The Air is Thick
On Earth Day, let’s look at what our politicians promise on air pollution The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress…