India ponders prospect of a new Gandhi at its helm
13 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The resemblance to Indira Gandhi is eerie —…
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Focus- Indian polls start “calm and confident”
16 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Indian voters queued up early on Monday to cast…
India wrestles with the wages of democracy
22 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 22 (Reuters) – “Watch this space.” The website of India’s 112-year-old Congress…
India waits in trepidation for election result
1 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 1 (Reuters) – Indians waited uneasily on Sunday for official results from…
Who’s afraid of India’s Hindu nationalists?
3 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 3 (Reuters) – India’s Bharatiya Janata Party appeared tantalisingly close on…
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’s weary Kashmiris told- “Go see a movie”
7 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) – A who’s who of Indian Kashmiris turned out in…
India general sees no danger of nuclear exchange
6 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The general commanding Indian troops in the tinderbox Kashmir…
ANALYSIS-Unlikely actors in India’s passion play
25 April 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, April 25 (Reuters) – What do a former housewife who speaks Italian-accented…
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…
Nuclear war unlikely over Kashmir, leader says
6 February 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Kashmir region said on Thursday…
Earthy Tales
Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours in, the captain announced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and it…
Faith, Hope And No Charity
The International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) began with a bang: the National Federation of the Blind led its members in a vociferous agitation in…
The Tamil Tragedy
The 35-km ride from Katunayake International Airport into Colombo in a slow Mitsubishi coach I driven by a nervous Sinhala I is enveloped in silence.…
The Aftermath
GANESHA’S temple had never seen so many supplicants, all with unanswerable prayers Colombo’s Tamils call it Pillaiyar Kovil, and its ornamented gateway on Galle Road…
TOILET -TRAINING INDIA
On September 25, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the Gates Foundation’s Global Goalkeepers Award in New York for his leadership of the Swachh…
KILLING ME SOFTLY
He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odour nor perfume—just strange,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…
FUTURE TENSE
So let’s see: 2018 is supposed to be a good year for India. We have low inflation, the monsoon may be normal, manufacturing is finally…
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
The other day, I watched this video of four-year-old Jackson Drew reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) and marvelled…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress seem to have finally woken up to the looming catastrophe of air pollution…