All private secretaries to Union ministers are equal, but S.R. Bhatia is more equal. Bhatia is the private secretary to Prakash Chand Sethi, the Union home minister, and currently he is at the centre of a storm that is battering at the doors of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and the Central Secretariat Service…
There was the baby-faced ex-pilot, all thumbs as he handled the controls in his political flight simulator; the rough-spun son of the, soil, a man of diamond-hard loyalty to the ruling family. catapulted into a devalued presidency; the freckle faced widow in rebellious flow, queen of the mimics and endowed with a hard nose; the…
The salaried middle classes have time and again fallen prey to the Government’s more capricious economic decisions. But, one group that has suffered the most from constantly rising costs of living is the large, amorphous mass of the nation’s pensioners. Bereft of a common voice, nearly three million retired government employees and defence personnel have…
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 Court heard the Patna Urban Cooperative Bank case. Then, last fortnight, Mishra’s fortunes took a sudden upward swing. On December 16, the Supreme Court held, by a two-one majority, that…