SWISS radiation experts have confirmed the worst suspicion of West Asia observers — that the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 in France wasn’t natural. Doctors couldn’t specify its cause. No autopsy was conducted. However, after analysing 75…
Nationalist euphoria is invariably conjured up when India conducts a new scientific experiment or makes bombs, missiles or submarines. India’s entry into a “select” high-technology “club” is celebrated — never mind its members’ readiness to rain mass death upon innocent…
WHATEVER its countless sins, the Sangh Parivar can never be accused of having produced a half-way tall intellectual. No Hindutva star, from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founders, to the present leaders of its 30-odd affiliates, including the BJP, remotely fits the…
SO addicted is India’s power elite to being treated as the representative of an unstoppable rising great power that it finds the recent decline in India’s global stature incomprehensible. The decline is unmistakable. The “India Story” is no longer the…
CONGRESS Vice President Rahul Gandhi succeeded in scuttling an ordinance which would have enabled convicted lawmakers to hold on to their seats despite being sentenced to jail for two years or more. Mr. Gandhi famously barged into a Congress press…
THE Bharatiya Janata Party has committed a historic blunder by allowing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — a conspiratorial, unelected body with a deeply sectarian, anti-democratic agenda — to dictate the choice of its prime ministerial candidate for the next election.…
IT’S an irony of history that an adversary can sometimes rescue you from trouble better than a friend. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did just that by proposing that the US defer its planned military attack on Syria if Damascus…
AFTER vacillating for four years, India’s United Progressive Alliance finally did something worthy and had the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) passed. It won a big 100-vote majority in the Lok Sabha because many non-UPA parties felt they had to…
THE assassination of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune is a black mark on Indian society. Forces of intolerance, superstition, irrationality and reaction killed him not because he threatened their faith or freedom, but because he was against exploiting people…
THE West Bengal electorate has handed a third consecutive defeat to the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). In the latest rural-council (panchayat) elections, the Front only won one of 17 zilla parishads (ZP). The Mamata…
Sometimes political leaders do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Take the decision of India’s Congress-led United Progressive Alliance to carve a new state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh, with Hyderabad as its capital. The Congress did this…
Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati, Professor of Economics at Columbia University in New York, isn’t self-effacing or modest. In 2004, he got a chair created in Indian political economy at Columbia, named after himself. Its occupant is Arvind Panagaria, Bhagwati’s co-author! In…
INDIA’S Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has charged eight Gujarat policemen, including senior officers D.G. Vanzara and P.P. Pandey, with premeditated murder for the 2004 “encounter” killing of teenager-student Ishrat Jahan and three others. They were falsely accused of plotting…
India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance is losing popularity by dithering on progressive measures like the land acquisition Bill, universal healthcare, and social security for unorganised workers. It has just passed a food security ordinance — after greatly diluting the original…
THE security bunkers that dotted Srinagar’s streets for two decades have gone. The oppressive presence of armed personnel has become less overwhelming. But the security forces’ shadow still hangs heavy over the social and political life in the Kashmir Valley.…
PERHAPS no other country has as complex a maze of laws and rules — estimated to number over 200 — that give arbitrary powers to the state as India. And none other has abused them as much to censor expression…
THE disconnect between nuclear power realities and the Indian establishment’s perceptions is complete. Nuclear power has long been in worldwide decline. The number of operating reactors peaked in 2002 at 444, and has fallen to under 380. Their output peaked…
A major scandal has broken out involving the collapse of a West Bengal business group called Saradha, promoted by upstart entrepreneur Sudipta Sen. The crash has wiped out the savings of 400,000 investors, many of them small and poor. Thousands…
IT is no small irony that car sales have doubled in India over five years as employment, and the share of national income going to the poor, have decreased. Automobile manufacturing is one of India’s fastest-growing industries, thanks to the…
TRINAMOOL Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee is India’s most abrasive, volatile and hysteria-prone political personality. But she surpassed herself with her tantrum at a protest by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) activists against her trivialisation of the custodial death of…
MODI moves centre-stage!” “Modi storms in as the BJP’s PM candidate.” “It’s Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi!” “In PM mode, Modi spells out strategy on big issues.” Thus scream the headlines in leading Indian publications and TV channels — part…
WHEN Mamta Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the second largest component of the United Progressive Alliance, walked out of it last September, nobody thought that would immediately destabilise the government. Although the UPA’s Lok Sabha strength suddenly fell to 254, below the…
India has failed to fashion a coherent, balanced and self-confident response to its turbulent neighbourhood. Leave aside Pakistan, India’s policy towards Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal looks confused, indecisive or inept. This has eroded India’s influence and legitimacy…
Our leaders prattle on about vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is our family). But the government says it will grant citizenship only to 4.5 million of our 20-odd million PIOs, in the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and the European Union. At…
The Vajpayee government couldn’t get Pakistan to stop supporting militants in Kashmir — despite lobbying with the US and the recent standoff. The Musharraf government feels frustrated that it cannot get India to discuss Kashmir…This combination of compulsion and frustration…
Congress should begin a series of discussions with committed anti-communal forces: Left-liberal political leaders, academics, intellectuals and anti-communal activists…Resecularising India isn’t any one party’s agenda. Politically unhinging the BJP and denying it legitimacy and electoral success is an imperative for…
The message from the BJP’s Chennai national executive is simple: the inner-party tussle between hardcore government supporters and organisational loyalists is not over. It took more than two weeks to finalise the text of the “Chennai Declaration”. And yet, confusion…
The Vajpayee government is desperately trying to cover up its abject mishandling of the IC-814 hijacking by blaming Pakistan for the whole episode. This attempt would be less unconvincing if it did not repeat promises to reveal “relevant facts” at…
The CTBT should be signed because it is a worthy restraint measure and will help India return to the global disarmament agenda; not because it will legitimise nuclear weapons. It is bad enough that India nuclearised. It is even more…
The agonising but avoidable hostage drama, and the monumental incompetence or deviousness of governments, have both deeply wounded the public conscience. The hijacking brings to an end the bloodiest century in history-with over 100 million dead in war, itself taken…
Like politics, our elite too is getting criminalised. Delhi’s BMW hit-and-run episode is a revolting sign of this. Criminality pervades every bit of it: driving without licence; overspeeding (at 140 kmph); manslaughter of six; hiding and destroying material evidence; obstructing…
Six years after the Babri demolition, four years after the plague, and eight months after Pokharan-II, India has again hit the headlines globally–thanks to the witchhunt against Christians. The BJP has again disgraced this nation in the eyes of the…
VHP president Ashok Singhal was rightly and roundly condemned when he fanatically called the award of the Nobel to Prof Amartya Sen a “Christian conspiracy”. This is more than the ranting of a lunatic. It represents the mindset of sections…
NEW DELHI: Deadly adversaries India and Pakistan hold the key to the world’s nuclear or non-nuclear future. Much of what happens in their inimical relationship, and more important, whether the world can at all be free of these mass-destruction…
