On a warm winter afternoon, Man Singh, an ailing sexagenarian, rested on the porch of his house in Kalyanpuri. Singh has been living in the slum cluster of this Faridabad locality for nearly four decades where, to accommodate his family of 12, he
Public sector undertakings – more specifically, their boards of directors – could be a fit case for politicians to build their spiel on women’s empowerment in this election season. Statistics do not always portray a tale in the r
"Chasi to mar gaya (Chasi is dead)," blurted out a frail-looking villager in the middle of a conversation with a group of BJP workers at the party`s district headquarters in Balasore. An interesting battle is on hand in this Odisha const
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which expects to do well in the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, with five pre-poll allies in the state, has more reasons to cheer. While chief minister J Jayalalithaa has been quiet on any pre-election alliance with
It is not just Amit Shah who wants voters to teach the perpetrators of Muzaffarnagar riots a lesson by voting for the BJP. Many a Hindu voters in Uttar Pradesh think this is the only way to curb the rising power of Muslims in the state, which is d
The Congress high command’s ploy of ‘one family, one ticket’ is leaving many senior partymen edgy in Telangana. The party, which is on the verge of finalising its candidates for the soon-to-be-divided state, is said to be employi
Sheel Kumar Roy never imagined the steely resolve that lay behind the soft voice of 86-year-old Lily Thomas when she greeted him on that fateful day in 2005. Roy had been fighting tooth and nail his dismissal from the army in 1991 and had gone to
People’s experience related to online public services is not always merrier due to the lack of technical expertise in the government and limited infrastructure. The rollout of public services on the internet is not easy. A department needs t
Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao today scotched all speculation about the last-minute prospect of an alliance with the Congress. In a show of supreme confidence, the pink party supremo released the party’s first list o
In its bid to streamline the visa and immigration process for the foreigners visiting the state Nagaland has implemented the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT) project in Kohima and Dimapur districts.
Uttar Pradesh is no longer just the state with the highest number of seats in the Lok Sabha. “62 percent of the population [around 12.4 crore] in UP is eligible to vote in this election,” says K. Vijayendra Pandian, additional chief el
The moment you get down at Bhubaneswar airport, the change in the weather hits you. It is warm and humid -- a sharp contrast to Delhi where a withering winter still retains a nip in the air. But what is curiously evident is the change in the polit
For the handful of market watchers expecting another rabbit being pulled out of a hat, Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan’s first bi-monthly monetary policy announcement on Tuesday came as a complete bummer. In line
The world’s largest and most vibrant democracy has one of its most exciting elections coming up. But sorely missing in the electoral fervour, speeches and promises, debates and issues is the environment. Strange, for it is one issue that imp
For nonagenarian DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, retirement from active politics does not seem to be near as his younger son MK Stalin, to whom Karunanidhi wants to hand over the baton, is yet to prove his mettle to lead the party. It has bee
This is the story of a marriage. A successful union of woman power with the power of institutional banking. In several villages of Tamil Nadu’s Kanchipuram district, otherwise famed for its Kanjivaram silk sarees, the two have come together
I was in Washington and my deputy editor at Reader’s Digest took me to a dinner party. He did not mention to the hosts who he was bringing along
The supreme court holding the Akhilesh Yadav led Uttar Pradesh government “prima facie” guilty of failing to prevent the Muzaffarnagar communal riots has underpinned the accusation being labelled on the state government ever since the
Helicopter politics preceded the electoral politics in Bihar. Chief minister Nitish Kumar became its casualty. In fact, the agency that has been providing helicopters to JD(U) all these years is primarily under contractual obligation with the BJP.
“Be what you would seem to be – or, if you’d like it put more simply – Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you
