The only blood that sub-inspector Kabir Singh Limbo has seen spilled in the Nellie area has been in very bad road accidents on National Highway 37 as traffic whizzes past. Limbo has been in charge of the tin-roofed Nellie police outpost for a year-and-a-half. During monsoons, Limbo says, parts of the highway linking Assam’s Goalpara…
“Mrs Gandhi Should disappear From The Political Scene” Jayaprakash Narayan today occupies a place in the hearts of his countrymen not unlike the one allotted to Mahatma Gandhi after Independence. How does the ailing ‘Father’ of the Second Liberation take to his new role? With his usual calm, discovered Chaitanya Kalbag and Shobha Kilachand…
Express News ServiceNEW DELHI, July 24:The Works and Housing Ministry and the New Delhi Municipal Committee came under sharp attack from opposition members of Parliament on Friday for allotting plots on instalments to Communist leaders and Congress(I) men on preferential terms to individuals close to the ruling party. The Minister for Works and Housing, Mr…
The question is being debated as never before Much against his wishes, Dr Manoj Shah may yet become a national hero. He is the polio victim who failed to get a seat in the post-graduate pathology course in Ahmedabad’s BJ Medical College. The reason? There was only one seat in the pathology department and that,…
Reuter When Corazon Aquino pledged retribution Tuesday for the latest coup attempt against her, she also proclaimed the finality of her transformation from hesitant housewife to leader of a tumultuous nation. For a woman who said her family was her greatest pleasure and agonized over entering politics in the shadow of her slain husband, Benigno,…
When CHAITANYA KALBAG arrived for this pre-arranged interview at Janata General Secretary RABI RAY’s residence at 12, Safdarjung Lane, New Delhi, an assistant of the latter’s informed him that he had been summoned urgently by the President, Mr Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, to Rashtrapati Bhavan. Half an hour later Mr Ray returned, to inform our correspondent…
It was a pleasure to attend the Ninth Upendra Vajpeyi Memorial Lecture on April 1, 2016, delivered by Balmiki Prasad Singh, who is a respected administrator, scholar, author and thinker. Mr Singh, a former Governor of Sikkim, is familiar with the absence of peace – he was a senior official in Assam when the anti-foreigner…
Three warnings from history on the perils of popularity In November 1937, an extraordinary essay titled, ‘The Rashtrapati’, appeared in a respected Calcutta journal. Written under the pseudonym Chanakya, it soon became known that the author was, in fact, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had just led the Congress to victory in elections in a majority of…
You have to be tall to apologise, and taller still to atone The 2019 election campaign was set to be the biggest, costliest, and dirtiest in our democratic history. In this dog-eat-dog atmosphere, no politician can afford to indulge in humility or ask voters to forgive their past sins. Remorse and contrition make you look…
This Parliament should improve its last track record The dust has settled, and a new government will take oath this evening. We have just elected the 17th Lok Sabha. Can we expect a more dynamic Parliament as we head towards New India? There are some encouraging signs: the average age of the 542 newly elected…
Election Commission needs more rope to get to the bottom of it Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled ₹20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced. This compared with ₹12.48 trillion on March 7, 2014, two days after the previous Lok Sabha election was announced. …
The 48-year-old challenger is flat on his back on the canvas. The crowd is cheering on the champion, who is 20 years older but lighter on his feet. Is the challenger out for the count, or will he go another round? Can Rahul Gandhi breathe life back into his shattered organization? Three weeks after the…
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth…’ —Alice’s Adventures in Wales (1865), Lewis Carroll Today marks the first day of the world’s biggest social media Election.…
How to create a state of suspended animation On August 5, the Indian government declared that Jammu and Kashmir is no longer an exception. On August 5, the Indian government decided to make Kashmir an exception. Why am I saying contradictory things about the same event? Because they are both facts. Bear with me. Removing…
Nobody speaks in the language of the masses Remarkably, after seven decades of spirited democracy, India has produced only three leaders, who have enjoyed nationwide popularity — Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi. I am not considering Lal Bahadur Shastri or Rajiv Gandhi (whose only electoral win was on the rebound from his mother’s…
Will the amended Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act happen just before the polls? We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape till custom make it Their perch and not their terror. -Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare…
India has crossed just one battle line, but many more lie ahead Political power grows out of the barrel of gun. More precisely, it grows from the air-to-air missiles mounted on an upgraded, but aging, MiG-21 Bison interceptor flown by the intrepid Wing Commander Abhimandan Vardhaman, who took on US-made Pakistani F16s on February 27.…
Better healthcare makes economic sense. Does it make political sense? Next week, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes his fifth Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, he might want to remind us that in 2022, the New India he has promised will arrive in more ways than one. Just four years from now, the…
Politics was reduced to raucous pandering: if Modi’s speech was short of a clearer vision of New India, Rahul did not lay out a blueprint for a transfer of power either It says a lot about Narendra Modi’s absence of apprehension over Friday’s no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha that the same day the foreign…
Four years ago, I wrote in my first Needle’s Eye column that predictions about caste not dominating the 2014 elections were all hogwash. If you still believe that four years of this government have whipped up a centripetal force of development and transformation, you need to notify the I&B Ministry that you are being misled…
In business, especially in human-resource management, appraisers are cautioned to evaluate an individual’s or department’s performance over a sustained period and not let ‘recency’, the most recent events (especially the turbulent ones) colour their judgment. I was reminded of this axiom by the Narendra Modi government’s current stint in Trishanku’s heaven. For those of us…
Cabinet reshuffles seem to generate more excitement than the announcement of cricket teams. So we know what the best game in town is. We knew weeks earlier that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was going to re-order his squad after the end of parliament’s monsoon session. By Saturday, everybody and her sister knew exactly who was…
Can you imagine Pope Francis being named the president of Brazil, which has the world’s largest Roman Catholic population (and the same number of people as Uttar Pradesh)? That is not going to happen, because the ‘Western’ way of thinking says there ought to be a separation of the temporal and the spiritual, the church…
As our all-too-brief winter slips into a warm spring, we are headed-once again-for another Judgement Day in our interminable elections. But, just as we start to weary of the burdens of democracy, it is useful to remember the meaning of that word: “power of the people”. Time and again we are reminded of the power…
There is nobody left in the Valley with the moral authority, the stature and the courage to stand and speak to the angry mobs. The last man who could have, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, died nearly 34 years ago. All of us view the past through a very limiting lens. We move the glass over people…
A senior official who is a member of the inner Gandhi circle told me Modi’s chaiwalla origin appeals to Americans, who love nothing better than a Horatio Alger-ish story of a rise from humble origins, through hard work and determination, to a lofty height Around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was delivering one of…
The only thing going for Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is his longevity in electoral politics Voter turnout in the first phase of Assam’s election on Monday was very high. By the time polls closed it had hit 78%. Assam’s voters usually turn out in large numbers, but this time the numbers bode ill for the…
The last time I checked, most of JNU’s 8000-plus students were boning up for exams that will land them top bureaucratic and police jobs. Armed with a good education, they will soon turn law-abiding taxpayers themselves, and start to pay for those monumental flags. Every time Indians feel the hot and heavy breath of their…
The sheer size of our population will continue to power domestic demand for some time, but India cannot hope to be a heavyweight global player without taking ever-bigger bites of the world trade pie. Sadly, alongside falling two-way trade, India has turned increasingly protectionist The world around us grows more uneasy by the day about…
Education and urbanisation sharply narrow the economic gap between the lower and upper castes. In bigger cities and towns, if you have a good job, your caste is not a badge of shame or pride. You might even be considered an equal Every few weeks, India heaves with episodic rage. Communal unrest, ghar wapsi, Hindutva,…
Five years ago the Centennial Group and the Asian Development Bank issued an interesting report titled “India 2039: An Affluent Society”. There is a lot to read there; the Congress party had just been re-elected, and it seemed to have been handed a decisive second chance that would enable it to get out of the…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at his best when he is talking. He has been in office for 555 days and I wager that he has made at least three times that number of speeches, give or take the time that he spends travelling on Air India One. Modi’s personal website and that of the…
In his 2011 book ‘Target 3 billion’, APJ Abdul Kalam wrote about returning across the Rajasthan desert after India’s Pokhran nuclear tests in May 1998. The temperature was around 50° C. A fellow scientist suggested they stop at a village called Badariya. There, Kalam was astonished to find a lush and green ashram. The head…
Did Narendra Modi just experience his Sharm el-Sheikh moment? The joint India-Pakistan statement issued in the Russian city of Ufa last Friday, after Modi initiated a meeting with Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, has been all but repudiated by Sharif’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz. Aziz said no talks with India can be held without Kashmir…
This weekend Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Nepal on his third foreign trip in ten weeks. By the end of September he will also have taken in Japan and the United States. Looming large on his itinerary will be China, which he visited four times as Gujarat’s chief minister in his quest for…
Our members of parliament sowed the wind in the 15th Lok Sabha and are reaping the whirlwind in the 16th Lok Sabha. The last Lok Sabha worked only for 61% of its scheduled time, the worst in the past half-century. The Bharatiya Janata Party was in very aggressive opposition to the United Progressive Alliance. There…
The Narendra Modi government has been taking a few hard knocks. It learned that sweet talk in Maharashtra’s sugar belt, or at a gaudy wedding celebration in a dusty town in the Uttar Pradesh bad lands, is just that: in politics, your friends always have one eye cocked at a higher seat of power. Your…
I felt a deep sadness as I listened to the hysteria over the suspicious donations that went into the Aam Aadmi Party’s coffers ten months ago. The shouting was all about campaign financing. It broke out five days before voting in the Delhi assembly election, and it completely drowned out all talk about what the…
Several moons ago a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the 2009 general elections. At every stop, the driver said, the young man would return with a bulging sack that he would stuff into the boot. The young man was collecting…
Dhaka, Aug. 11: Bangladesh’s state minister for local government and rural development Syed Abul Hossain has resigned after he used a second passport on a recent private visit to Singapore, officials at the Prime Minister’s office said on Monday. They said the minister tended his resignation letter on Sunday requesting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed…
China’s official media yesterday attacked a “small group” they accused of plotting to overthrow communist rule and said the group had help from the highest level of the party. The front-page article, printed in every major newspaper in the Chinese capital and read in full on state television and radio, also accused the plotters of…
By CHAITANYA KALBAG New Delhi, Dec 11. India’s ruling Congress (I) Party, which celebrates its centenary next year, is fighting for political survival as much as a parliamentary majority in national elections in two weeks’ time. After years of unchallenged supremacy as India’s dominant political force, the party is being rocked by an internal debate…
New Delhi: The Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, yesterday denied local press reports that she had accused a US espionage agency of fomenting Sikh secessionist activity. Mrs Gandhi told reporters in Himachal Pradesh state, in the foothills of the Himalayas, that she had merely quoted a Washington-datelined press report. She did not identify the report. Addressing…
Both the ruling party and the main opposition party are embroiled in leadership disputes that could lead to party splits. Reuter SEOUL-South Korea’s main opposition party, locked in intense factional strife, was on the verge of a split Monday with its leader threatening to quit and form a new political group. The battle in the…
The sub-text to the debate on simultaneous elections is that BJP wants to further centralise power. In 2012, watching Manmohan Singh struggling with a disorderly coalition, an obstreperous cabinet, and a host of powerful state chief ministers, I wrote that he was the lone prime minister in a nation of presidents. In 2014, on the…
Can momentum towards holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha, state assemblies be achieved in one fell swoop? The momentum towards holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies is growing, but can this be achieved in one fell swoop? If it is done in stages, it may take until 2024 at least to…
With a step forward from Monarchy to a Republic, Iran has taken two steps backwards: restricting freedom, curbing women’s right and executions after summary trials. “Who would believe that I should work 10 hours a day for 37 years to help my country only to see it go back to the point where I began?”…
But the people have their ways of making do Close to one-sixth of Iran’s population of 38 million lives in Teheran, the sprawling capital that slides southward from the cold slopes of an Elborz Mountains spur. And Teheran was trying, in the weeks I spent there, with a touch of grouchiness, to look like a…
The violence and the passions that have unleashed a caste war in Gujarat have found sympathetic onlookers in Tamil Nadu. These onlookers may not remain passive: they are already contemplating demonstrations of support for the anti-reservationists in Gujarat. “If it’s necessary, we’ll all go to Gujarat and join the agitation,” bursts out Mrs. Bagalakumari…
Poorly paid, snowed under by a huge backlog of pending cases, buffeted by the government’s attempts to manipulate judicial processes and appointments, our judiciary has not been able to preserve its independence. At the same time, our Constitution has been considerably tampered with by the legislature. What are the causes of this state of ,…
A line was crossed this Dussehra when Doordarshan broadcast the Vijaya Dashami speech by Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat, the Sarsanghachalak of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). That line divided the state and religion in India. We do not have a state religion, and we are not a religious state like Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran.…
“Our nation’s biggest problem is that we who sit in government think nobody knows more than us, nobody is more honest than us, and nobody cares more about the nation than us. This is wrong. We have to trust 1.25 billion Indians. The government cannot run on suspicions,” Narendra Modi told an audience on Thursday,…
For prime minister Narendra Modi, 2015 has been an annus horribilis, bracketed by the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) waiting loss in the Delhi elections in February, and now the even more humiliating and momentous loss in Bihar. Bihar has been bruited about, mainly by the BJP, as a referendum on Modi’s popularity. Modi heavily invested…
Key state Uttar Pradesh is a political lynchpin: it sends the maximum number of representatives (80) to parliament’s lower house. It was home to nine of India’s 15 prime ministers. Modi, who forsook his own western state of Gujarat to win a parliamentary seat from Uttar Pradesh’s Hindu holy city of Varanasi in 2014, said…
Several moons ago, a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the 2009 general elections. At every stop, the driver said, the young man would return with a bulging sack that he would stuff into the boot. The young man was collecting…
Transindia: Mr. Chandra Shekhar, do you think you have one of the most thankless jobs in the country today, what with having to build up a party composed of such varied components as the Janata is?
Chandra Shekhar: I agree that we have had to create a party from scratch. But I would not say that my job is thankless. There are certain advantages which one cannot ignore and there are many difficulties, too.
Is Drinking A Ritual? Then I Think It Is Better to Close Our Diplomatic Missions! The appointment is at 1 pm at the Prime Minister’s Office in South Block. These imposing stone buildings, a few hundred yards away from Rashtrapati Bhavan, contain the offices of most of India’s government leaders. A surprisingly courteous Reception Officer enters…
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Gandhi must have been passing through an extremely clairvoyant phase when he came up with this statement in the Thirties. In the thirty years that have passed since Jawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as the first Prime Minister…
Eighteen hours after Haryana Governor Ganapatrao Devji Tapase committed the most undemocratic faux pas in India’s political history, he was cowering on a sofa in the Chandigarh Raj Bhavan’s large reception hall. “This is Haryana!” yelled apoplectic Lok Dal MLAs, eyes blood-shot, neck veins bulging, pressing around the diminutive Tapase in a knee-touching, eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.…
CONGRESS PARTY PRESIDENT- BRAHMANANDA REDDY “We Will Return to Power Soon” Transindia: Mr. Reddy, many people feel that the Congress Party has had a great past, but does not have a great future. Would you like to comment on that? Brahmananda Reddy: That the Congress Party had a great and glorious past is accepted by…
Union Home Minister Prakash Chand Sethi has elevated the art of governance to a fine degree of pettifoggery. Political interference in the bureaucracy is not unusual, but Sethi is exhibited a penchant for intervention in personnel promotions. In the process, he has heightened the siege mentality of the Central Secretariat Service (CSS), which is constantly…
11 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 11, Reuter – The Philippine Senate has ended a six-month lull by taking some tough steps on the country’s debt. It has proposed limiting debt service limit and suspending payments on a 1.2 billion dollar nuclear plant loan. The Senate also unanimously passed…
12 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 12, Reuter – The Philippine Senate is apparently softening its stand on a tough anti-nuclear bill, with some legislators saying on Thursday, they back amendments that would tone down the measure. The “Freedom from Nuclear Weapons Bill” aims to ban port calls by…
23 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 23 (Reuter) – Nepal’s fragile coalition government is not in any danger despite the Communist partner’s strong showing in local polls, Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand said on Friday. “I don’t see any threat now but it is very difficult to predict when…
19 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 19, Reuter – Philippine officials said on Tuesday that It was up to President Corazon Aquino to interpret an anti-nuclear constitutional clause that could affect the future of the two main U.S. bases in the country. A joint executive-legislative panel set up by…
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – Philippine President Corazon Aquino, secure in power near the end of a coup-free year, is trying to get tough with her problems. “The president feels she has to use some form of brass knuckles now where she was all sweetness…
20 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 20, Reuters – Whoever wins this week’s Indian elections will face some knotty economic problems, but analysts believe the nation will continue to open up to the world. “Liberalisation will have to continue whichever government comes in. This is economic reality,” said…
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 21, Reuters – The leader of an increasingly powerful rightwing Hindu party said on Tuesday that India faces instability if the opposition alliance he backs wins this week’s elections. Lal Krishna Advani of the revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was harsh in…
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuters – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from cursing bus-drivers in the evening traffic are worried about their daily bath. “Election? What election? I have a holiday on polling day and plan to visit my mother,” says Barun…
22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 22, Reuter – Political instability likely to result from this week’s elections could dangerously slow India’s economic growth, economic analysts said. They said the new government could also face a resource crisis brought on by plunging foreign exchange reserves, unbridled domestic demand…
22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Reuter – Political instability likely to result from this week’s elections could slow India’s growth dangerously, analysts said on Wednesday. They said the new government would also face a resource crisis brought on by plunging foreign exchange reserves, unbridled domestic demand and a…
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuters – Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wound up an exhausting election campaign on Friday, addressing a sparse crowd standing up to its ankles in mud. Chief rival Vishwanath Pratap Singh ended his campaign jubilant. “Congress will be routed,” Singh told…
15 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 15 (Reuter) – A leading opposition politician is preparing to revolt against his party in hopes of becoming Japan’s next prime minister, NHK public television said on Friday. Meanwhile, the fate of the nation’s ruling coalition, riven by a struggle for power, hung…
16 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s tour of India slid deeper into controversy on Thursday with sources close to the Indian government charging that Britain’s ruling Labour Party had a “hidden agenda” to create an independent Kashmir region. Even as British officials scrambled…
The Janata Party will soon split. The Janata Party has always been a loose coalition. The Janata Party’s constituents have view-points and ambitions that differ too widely. The Janata Party was a short-lived experiment in democracy. Opinions like these began to rotate slowly in the air when hardly a few months had passed after the…
‘I have to follow capitalism’ It is like being thrown about in an ideological cocktail shaker. You get off a gleaming passenger jet and drive over a soaring expressway to the 227-year-old Writers’ Buildings in Kolkata to meet a very capitalist communist politician. West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee says there is no place for…
Or, why India really needs to dig itself out of a mineral hole 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 might be difficult to land in such bad weather. “We have fuel for about fifteen minutes,” he…
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s dramatic announcement on January 18 that the Emergency in India is being relaxed and that elections to the Lok Sabha will be held in March, has created ripples of amazement the world over. All detained Opposition leaders have been released, and press censorship has been lifted. What do these developments portend?…
Speaking about the 1971 elections to a Newsweek correspondent, Mrs Indira Gandhi had said: “I am the real issue in this election.” In 1977, too, it is she who is the real issue. Her challengers’ election manifestos say hardly anything new, except that they vow to ‘wipe out’ the ‘scourges’ of the Emergency. 320 million…
There had been many signs of the anti-Congress wind in the final days of the 1977 election campaign, but its magnitude amazed the canniest political forecaster. In a hurricane sweep, it snuffed out thirty years of uninterrupted Congress rule in independent India, and sent Premier Indira Gandhi, and her feared lieutenants, into sudden oblivion. The…
Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the struggle within “We are all like a family and there is bound to be dissent in a democratic party.” The trouble with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 55, is he is too transparent. A rotund, dhoti-cad orator given to over- heated rhetoric, his misfortune is that he heads a party consisting in…
From the Editor “Sssssay now … what we have we here?” hisses Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book, smacking his lips over Mowgli. “Jusssst you wait till I get you in my coils!” Corruption certainly seemed to be strangling the Incredible India magic this fortnight. It began with nationwide conniption over corruption as Anna…
If politics is the art of deception, the Congress(I) symbolises its highly developed state. After crying itself hoarse about its inability to conduct the Garhwal Lok Sabha by-election, the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh seems on the surface surprisingly resigned to the victory of its bête noire, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, 63, president of the Democratic…
It began as a small tiff, as all battles do. The two antagonists identities lent it a delicious irony: Vijaya Raje Scindia, the ex-Rajmata of Gwalior, and her only son, ex-Maharaja Madhavrao. Over the years, this essentially political fight spilt out of the Gwalior palace into national attention. Today, it includes all the ingredients of…
Whatever else the government is butter-fingered at doing, it is adept at keeping the results of its impetuosity in a state of continuing suspense’. The campaign against the Bihar Press Bill is almost four months old now, but the Government has only indulged in a lot of double-talk—swearing by press freedom in one breath, and…
For all those journalists who think they belong to a thankless and poorly-paid profession, there is hope on the horizon. It comes from the latest impresario to champion the “welfare and relief” of India’s toiling journalists: Jinendra Kumar Jain, 42. From obscure beginnings as a small-time publisher, Jain has used every ‘journalistic’ rung to hop…
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from his experience, a vision of a funny world. The difference, of course, is that everybody is talking about three old men-charan Singh, 79, Morarji Desai, 86, and Jagjivan Ram, 74,…
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 feud between Mrs Gandhi and her rebellious daughter-in law Maneka. But though the charges can never really be substantiated, there is a connection which leads credence to the charge-the friendship…
I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun. Yes it is. — John Lennon. 1968 Vishwanath Pratap Singh had cause to be happy on December 30 The prime minister herself had come down to Lucknow to pat him on his back and give his ministry a clean chit.…
Nearly two months after a shocked Parliament was rocked by the Nellie and Gohpur massacres and the bloodbath that had drenched Assam during February’s’ election week, the issue had all but been forgotten by both government and opposition. Suddenly last fortnight it was revived by journalist Arun Shourie’s scathing expose in the last issue of…
The sprawling city that Charles-Edouard le Corbusier had designed for bureaucrats and retired people looked like an army encampment girding up for an enemy onslaught. As the expected moment of conflict neared, Chandigarh’s streets were gradually cordoned off with bamboo and steel barricades; a vast area taking in the Punjab, Haryana and Union territory secretariats,…
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s health more than anything else has been responsible for the sudden thaw in Delhi-Srinagar relations For a while last month Kashmir teetered on the brink of an insoluble crisis while the prickly Resettlement Bill hung fire, the Sheikh grew more belligerent and the Centre seemed trapped in a peculiar inertia. Then, on…
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi Lal reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have clashed repeatedly over the last two years and a half-only to be dragged back into uneasy reconciliation every time by mediators. Incredibly, Charan Singh moved to hammer the last nail…
One of the misconceptions spawned by the Bihar Press Bill is that it will emasculate Bihar’s journalists. The truth is that Bihar’s journalists have already been emasculated by Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra. Using the twin methods of patronage and advertisement support, Mishra’s Government has directly subsidised an explosion of small papers across the state-the very…
In the coolness of the early morning there is little traffic on National Highway 3. Outward bound from Nasik, the tar stretches infinitely in mottled grey, punctuated by the whoosh and blare of passing trucks. Through the sounds of the stirring countryside come the choral slaps of the marchers’ feet. It is a curious cavalcade—at…
Development is not a Linear Process, says World Bank’s Country Director Roberto Zagha has been the World Bank’s Country Director in India since January 2009, when the economy was reeling from the global financial crisis and just before the national elections that brought the UPA back to power. Zagha, a Brazilian national, has been closely…
The Method Man – Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya Kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall man, but he exudes self-assurance and authority. There is something of the High Priest of Mohenjo-Daro about him, presiding at the altar of Capitalist Gujarat under…
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and hard. Schoolgirls on bicycles. Schools that actually function. Half of all panchayat posts are reserved for women. Close to 40,000 criminals were put behind bars. Roads that can be driven…
As we prepare to vote, lots of loose talk lies ahead If you believe in the theory of evolution, as I do, then you will agree that one of the very few things that separates us from our earliest ancestors is the faculty of speech. Scientists speculate that we were communicating through speech as far…
Merchandise, tourism, a board game, a biopic, a web series … If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd at one of the prime minister’s rallies, then go to his website, which has a link to ‘NaMo Merchandise’.…