Riding the Nationalist Wave
AFTER A SUICIDE BOMBER BLEW UP A BUS carrying CRPF personnel in Pulwama, Kashmir, in February, an angry crowd appeared in the form of a procession in the main town of Samastipur in Bihar. Anti-Pakistan...
View ArticleGeneral Election 2019: Quote Hanger
IF YOU MUST quibble with Aiyar’s question, then it is not about any reprehensibility incurred in calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a neech kisam ka aadmi (a low-minded person) on that fateful day of...
View ArticleThe Meaning of the Mandate
ON THE DAY HE WON THE SECOND TERM AS Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi’s demeanor was like Arjuna in the Battle of Kurukshetra—composed yet confident. He seemed unprepared to rest on his laurels,...
View ArticleOpen Diary
EVERY ELECTION GENERATES a wave of recriminations in the ranks of the defeated. Where and why did we go wrong? Who should take responsibility? What is the way forward? These are some of the legitimate...
View ArticleThe Last Resort of Politics
THE RENAISSANCE MUMBAI Convention Centre Hotel is a white stately five-star with a USP boasting a location on the banks of the Powai lake, the main water body of Mumbai. It belongs to the Marriott...
View ArticleZero Marx
I remember visiting Harkishan Singh Surjeet’s ancestral home in Bundala in early 2005. It was a long drive from Delhi and we got lost more than once after reaching this large village in Jalandhar...
View ArticleAuthor of the Indian Century
For the first half of the ‘Open Decade’, between 2009 and 2019, India was governed with a closed mind.History does not measure time by the feeble pages of a calendar. It shapes our lives through the...
View ArticleKarnataka: The Inevitable End
ON JULY 23RD EVENING, after 14 months as Karnataka Chief Minister, HD Kumaraswamy’s luck ran out. His own prayers, his brother HD Revanna’s magic lemons, even a lucky room at the Taj West End—all...
View ArticleSheila Dikshit (1938-2019): Leader with a Capital L
HER GLASS-WALLED living room facing the 16th century Humayun’s tomb was slowly getting filled with Congress leaders and workers. It was about a week to go for Lok Sabha elections in Delhi this May. In...
View ArticleHow the Congress Lost the War of Ideas
What do you say about the entitled leadership of the country’s oldest political party except that they seem to have a tendency to perennially shoot themselves in the foot? In May, when he finally...
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