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…
Read more
Frozen in the Headlights
Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed…
Focus- India set for Hindu-led coalition government
10 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 10 (Reuters) – India was set on Tuesday for a new coalition…
India’s BJP wins power, but daunting task ahead
15 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 15 (Reuters) – Atal Behari Vajpayee received the green light on Sunday…
India’s Vajpayee tries to form coalition
16 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 16 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Hindu-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)…
Focus- Hindu leader Vajpayee takes power in India
19 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 19 (Reuters) – Hindu nationalist leader Atal Behari Vajpayee took office on…
India unmoved by prospect of being global pariah
12 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 12 (Reuters) – India was engulfed by waves of international anger and…
Focus- India says Pakistan N-tests justify policy
29 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 28 (Reuters) – The Indian government reacted calmly on Thursday to news…
India’s Vajpayee should “go for broke”, rival says
29 November 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s wounded Bharatiya Janata Party should ram through an…
ANALYSIS-India’s Sonia Gandhi plays brinkswoman
18 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 17 (Reuters) – Sonia Gandhi spent 16 years observing India’s most…
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…
Until Death Do Us Part
No Amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage. In the last few weeks, eight women have died…
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…
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…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
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.…
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);…
SHOW ME THE JOBS
The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs meter. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the…
BHAG PIYUSH BHAG
Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a go-getter. Goyal, who likes taking leadership courses (currently…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
Glass Half-Full?
We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that…
VIRAL FEVER
Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our mobiles. The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India survey…
RED-LETTER DAYS
This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s…
NaMo the FMCG
If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd…
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…