It’s 2014, just after the general elections and the national debate on who will be the PM is heating up. A look at how the main characters are lined up, and how they act, react and enact the PM-in-the-wings role before the curtains go up on the 16th Lok Sabha. Sonia Gandhi: As chairperson of UPA-37 (it came apart and came together 35 times in the last few months),
In 1999, on a monotonous bus journey from Lucknow to Allahabad to unwillingly (and by my own reason also unnecessarily) represent my father at the wedding of a long forgotten and wholly dispensable cousin, I was woken by the sudden jolt caused by the brakes. Tried more by reluctance than tedium, I angrily asked the bus conductor what we were supposed to do at the roadside dhabha near Pratapgarh
Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, it seems, is carrying the stick he ought to have left behind in the police station when he quit as a constable. On Friday, he threatened to use it — metaphorically, of course — on the ministry mandarin/s who messed up the message of his statement on the rape and murder of three minor dalit girls in Bhandara, Maharashtra. While making a state
The aam aadmi has his own views on P Chidambaram’s budget but he leaves you in no doubt about one aspect of it. When you ask him about the surcharge on the income tax on the super-rich, he grins and there are others as well who join him on this, all grinning and nodding in agreement. There is an added incentive too – the increase in duties on the vehicles that the rich prefer to dri
Finance minister P Chidambaram may have built a Robin Hood-like image for himself by imposing a ‘super-rich’ tax on high net worth individuals (HNIs) and corporate bodies while dramatically increasing funds for social sector welfare schemes, he continues to write off huge amounts of tax liabilities of these very super-rich too. The statement of revenue foregone, relea
The recent developments in the ongoing trial of the accused in the infamous Nirbhaya rape and murder case have thrown up new challenges on the possible misuse of the juvinile justice law. The contradictions and subjectivity of the government authorities has added to this possible misuse of the legal provisions relating to determination of age of persons accused in a crime. Amid t
The economic survey, presented in parliament on Wednesday, has a curious new feature: a full chapter on ‘Seizing the demographic dividend’, on how the youth are going to dominate the next decade or so, and what it means for the future of job creation in India. Of course, ‘demographic dividend’ is not a new phenomenon for economists. It has also attracted
On Tuesday, as he started with a flourish, quoting couplets, hemmed and hawed midway through his rail budget speech as the din rose in the opposition benches and wound up with a whimper, almost sheepishly, as fellow cabinet colleague Kamal Nath advised him to wrap up, railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal looked a bit like one those Indian Railway trains. You just cannot set predict them.
The Hyderabad blasts have revived the debate over national counter terrorism centre (NCTC), former union home minister P Chidambaram’s pet project to create an overarching organization to fight terrorism in the country, which was put on hold last year following widespread protests from the state governments. Chidambaram’s successor Sushil Kumar Shinde urged the state governments the
The trouble with Indian military shopping deals is that when things go wrong they throw the baby out with the bathwater. Cancelling the deal for the $750 million order for a dozen helicopters from Italian defence group Finmeccanica, because of kickbacks is not the answer. Catch the culprits, keep the choppers. Why make the equipment guilty? They did exactly the same thing with the Bofor
It’s still firmly in the realm of conspiracy theories. But some believe the US and Israel formally attacked Iran sometime in the month of June 2010, and both are now at war. There is some uncomfortable evidence to support these conspiracy theorists, and more keeps tumbling out. But it’s still circumstantial at best. In June of that year cyber-security experts discovered an ext
British prime minister David Cameron’s semi-apology during his visit to Jallianwala Bagh massacre memorial on Wednesday has been criticised by newspapers today. They, as well as the news channels, wanted nothing less than a full and formal one. Fine. But why not a few apologies preceding Jallianwala? On March 22, 1739, Nadir Shah, the Shah of Iran (1736–47) a
Amid this ongoing national debate about Narendra Modi being a probable prime minister candidate for India, British PM David Cameron offered some lessons for Mr Modi when he regretted the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (though falling short of an apology). Does it mean that Cameron is personally guilty of what had happened in 1919? Does it lower his moral guard? I think not. Without commenti
Anthropology has failed to trace the origin of the world’s first godman. But most probably he preceded the idea of god and sold it out to people until it gained currency. India being the spiritual capital of the world has now graduated from being the land of snake charmers to that of godmen. All types, hues and sizes are available. So much so that they occupy one-third of the country&rsqu
The Durga Nagpal controversy has brought to the surface the issue of political interference impeding bureaucratic work. Our columnist, a former bureaucrat himself, had written this piece about how bound administrators in our country are by our representatives. We are reviving his column (published February 13, 2013 on our website) for more insight into legislative-executive relations.
As if the numerous controversies the Congress is battling in recent times are not enough, the party’s MP from Kerala K Sudhakaran has added another one for the party’s troubleshooters to handle after he made offensive remarks against the Suryanelli rape victim, calling her a “prostitute”. And to make matters worse, he has refused to apologise. On Sunday, while ad
Press council of India chief Markanday Katju is a marksman par excellence. After relentlessly trying many targets, he seems to have hit through the right one. In a signed article that appeared in The Hindu on February 15, Katju questioned Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s s
“1949: Only socialism could save China 1979: Only capitalism could save China 1989: Only China could save socialism 2009: Only China could save capitalism” - Joke doing the rounds in Beijing after the global financial crash China, the world’s most populous country, with a population of 1.3 billion and the fourth largest count
President Pranab Mukherjee in a recent meeting with the vice-chancellors of central universities has proposed several initiatives which could perhaps help in transforming higher education and connection between academia, innovators and rest of the society. According to the press release dated Feb 7, 2013, he would interact with teachers
Governance Now and CVoter carried out a survey of the trust various institutions of governance inspire among the people. Read more about the overall findings of the survey here:Trust of the Republic survey: little faith in government
