A cop and an army man
Anil Pandey revisits a village in western Uttar Pradesh to meet two childhood friends: one a proud retired military man and the other a superannuated cop.
When Mobiles Crack crime
Ever since the mobile phone revolution swept across India, cops and sleuths have found the ubiquitous handset and the mobile towers to be a very handy tool in solving crimes of all types.This has been borne out by the manner in which the cops claim to have solved the two recent sensational cases involving liquor baron Ponty Chaddha and real estate tycoon cum erstwhile BSP leader Deepak Bharadwaj. Rapid advances in technology have turned an ordinary mobile phone into a potent tool not only for criminals, but also for law enforcement agencies.
Time to jockey
Last week in Lucknow, on the 103rd birth anniversary of Socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia, Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, caused a huge ripple. He defined BJP leader and his former bete noir LK Advani as an `honest leader’ and a man of principles.
The Muslim Mandate
A friend recently pointed out in jest (but with a touch of gravitas) that if all noble intentions and all well meaning policies to promote the well being of minorities in India were honestly implemented over the last 65 odd years, then Muslims would have a higher per capita income than even Jews!
Brave New World
My first encounter with Maharashtra was pristine, ivory tower, innocent and almost like a first love.
Live and let die
Ask any Congress worker who is Kalawati Bandurkar. The chances are that he will say she is the poor farm widow from Yavatmal district of Vidarbha whose husband Parshuram had committed suicide on December 23, 2005 because of the agrarian crisis.
Never say no
Maharashtra, once a preferred destination for freedom fighters, is also India’s financial hub.
No glasshouses here
For the 'secular' media, while the Gujarat Chief Minister is the ultimate embodiment of all that is evil, thanks to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the state, the role of Congress governments where riots are a frequent happening, have surprisingly gone unnoticed.
A few bad men
It is not easy being a Home Minister in a country like India. Ask L.K. Advani, the leader who so desperately craved to be recognized as the natural inheritor of the legacy left behind by India's first Home Minister Sardar Patel.
"We will reap benefits in 2014"
When you think deeply, you think some good work has been done, but again, there are doubts. Maybe some things could have been done better.
365 Days of Solitude
For most of 2011, when the mainstream media in Delhi was obsessed with Rahul Gandhi and his plans to revive the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the 39 year old Akhilesh Yadav was touring the state on a bicycle and connecting with both party workers and voters at the grassroots level.
A soft dismissal
It is hugely ironical that an uncommonly gifted Test batsman who has never had the numbers on the scoreboard in his sights now has the lack of runs being thrown at him by the national selectors as the reason for his ouster from the team.
The India v/s bharat test
If I am not mistaken, it happened in 1984, arguably one of the most tumultuous and violent years in the history of independent India. Soon after winning the cricket World Cup in 1983, the Indian team led by the small town-broken English Kapil Dev was thrashed and humiliated by a rampaging West Indies team bent on vengeance for the World Cup loss.
Whispering death
They say it hits with a warning. Only if you consider the constant humming sound that hits your eardrums everyday, a warning. In Waziristan's non-polluting environment in the absence of industrial units and vehicular pollution, it is pretty much a hiss.
Get real White House
Officials promoting Obama’s Drone programme continue to churn out the same old rhetoric of how grateful those in the tribal areas are every time a Drone strike is launched on Waziristan.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
