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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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…

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Political Compulsion

Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were informed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their applications for…

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The Art of Survival

Counter-Insurgency Deep inside the jungle in northernmost Mizoram, a lone man brews a tin mug of tea in the early morning haze. He is squatting…

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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…

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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…

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