My Years in an Indian Prison Mary Tyler
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the issue…
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Reading The Bar Codes
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp Strange how time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
Hello, Tomorrow
I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…
A Battle Supreme
Titled Judiciary: Attacks and Survival, the speech had been long in coming, the speaker delayed, first by an attack of diabetes in March and then…
Mysterious U-Turn
Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…
Jagannath Mishra-Cleared By The Court
The India-Rubber man, Jagannath Mishra, had done it again. For months, the Bihar chief minister’s political fate had hung in the balance while the Supreme…
Cheating The Hangman
Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…
Hanging Fire
The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…
Until Death Do Us Part
I am your valuable,/The Pure gold baby,/That melts to a shriek,/I turn and burn,/Do not think I underestimate your/great concern./Ash, ash/You poke and stir,/Flesh, bone,…
Death Penalty – Snag In The Rope
Anticlimax has become the boon companion of the Supreme Court. When the court reopened on July 18 after its summer vacation, it was shadowed by…
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…
Jaat Kahan Ho
Some day extraterrestrials will thrill to Raag Bhairavi in outer space Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill…
Clutching At Straws
Palliatives, pain-killers or band-aids: take your pick We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us…
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…