The people's champion
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) is facing a bit of an embarrassment.
A state of no return
The Bharatiya Janata Party has never been more than a fringe player in West Bengal despite the fact that several Bengali leaders played a crucial role in the evolution of India’s Hindu rightwing.
Back against the wall
While the Congress is under pressure in several states, nowhere is the situation as piquant for it as in Andhra Pradesh.
The fear factor
The question has the ring of a national pastime: who will the Muslims go with in 2014?
Clutching at straws
Every election (and increasingly in between), Congress workers work themselves into a frenzy asking for greater participation by Priyanka Gandhi in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
10 reasons why Indians can still smile
India seems to be on the verge of being swarmed and overwhelmed by a multitude of bad news epidemics.
White collared militants
What is it about Hubli-Dharwad in northern Karnataka that attracts disaffected young men to the cause of jihad? A quiet and serene part of the state which once boasted of the country's most profound musical and intellectual traditions, is currently an acknowledged centre of sedition.
Chasing the Moon
There are thousands of Pakistani Hindus living in pathetic conditions in temporary settlements on the dusty outskirts of Jodhpur, Jaisalmer and Barmer in Rajasthan, as also in Gujarat, Punjab and New Delhi.
No Land's Man
Their religion is their biggest bane. It deprived them of their very right to live in a state crafted on the basis of religious identity. Scared witless by rapes, abductions, extortions and forced conversions all around them, Pakistani Hindus reached out to secular India for some succor.
'Regulators provide windfalls to private monopolies'
By and large we have seen two kinds of things. One is that these regulators are appointed by the government and very often they are bureaucrats, just retired or have taken premature retirement. Very often then they do what the government wants them to do.
States follow the centre
tates, ultimately, follow the centre. Take Odisha. It is an open secret that the state government peroidically presents ‘prized postings’ to IAS officers after their superannuation, a not-too-subtle acknowledgement of their loyalty and obedience to political bosses.
Regulator Raj
In June this year, when Rajiv Nayan Choubey, a 1981 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, was appointed to head the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), the Union Petroleum Ministry’s regulatory arm for exploration firms, new ground was being broken.
The Ethnic Divide
Massacres and attempted annihilation are touchy issues. Ask a Turk about Armenia and he will be at your throat. Serbs will never accept what happened in Srebrenica.
Fear is the key...
The Chennai suburbs of Thirisulam and Vanagaram turn into second-hand cloth markets every weekend. Sellers lay out their wares on Fridays at Thirisulam and on Sundays at Vanaagaram.
Lust, Sex aur Dhokha
India was slowly and painfully emerging from the shock of 26/11. Weeks of outraged TV debates and hysteria, it seemed, had numbed our senses.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
