The Dauphin and the Figurehead
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led…
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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.…
Mathematics Of Ragas
When Frenchman Bernard Bel and American Jim Arnold met by chance in a Delhi hotel in September 1979, it turned out to be a momentous…
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)…
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…
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…
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…
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…