August , 2007
Karat and Stick
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We always knew the Prime Minister had a mind of his own. Now, we know he's finally added some muscle. When the history of Dr Manmohan Singh's prime ministership is written, the week of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence will go down as the period when the Prime Minister may have finally celebrated his personal liberation. By dramatically daring the Left to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal, he finally drew a lakshman rekha in his relationship. The big question will now have to be answered in the weeks ahead: was this only a fleeting moment of muscle-flexing madness or is this a genuine turning point in the relations between Dr Singh and his Left "allies", a moment when the Prime Minister finally realised the power and weight of the Prime Minister's office. In a sense, a parallel can be drawn between Dr Singh and his predecessor Atal....
Needed: A Lesson in History
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I am not a midnight's child or a child of partition. Actually, I was born the year after Nehru died. In a sense, I represent the post-Nehruvian generation, those for whom the freedom struggle was confined to Amar Chitra Katha comics and history textbooks that valorised our national icons. And yet, i must confesss there is something about 60 years of Indian independence that fills me with a sense of pride and nostalgia. Pride in being an Indian, nostalgia for what it must have been like in those heady days ahead of August 15th 1947. Looking at sepia-tinted images of Rajpath on the day India achieved freedom, one can imagine the frenzied crowds, the sense of utter joy at being a free nation. We take freedom for granted today. We couldn't have been quite so bindaas 60 years ago. That perhaps is our greatest achievement, creating....
More about Rajdeep Sardesai
Rajdeep Sardesai is the Editor-in-Chief, IBN18 Network, that includes CNN-IBN, IBN 7 and IBN Lokmat. He comes with 22 years of journalistic experience during which he has covered some of the biggest stories in India and the world. Prior to setting up the IBN network, he was the Managing Editor of both NDTV 24X7 and NDTV India and was responsible for overseeing the news policy for both the channels. He has also worked with The Times of India for six years and was the city editor of its Mumbai edition at the age of 26. During the last 22 years, he has covered major national and international stories, specialising in national politics. He has won numerous other awards for journalistic excellence, including the prestigious Padma Shri for journalism in 2008, the International Broadcasters Award for coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots and the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for 2007. He has won the Asian Television Award for best talk show for the Big Fight on two occasions and his current flagship show on CNN-IBN, India at 9, has been awarded the best news show at the Asian awards for the last two years. He has been News Anchor of the year at the Indian Television Academy for seven of the last eight years and won more than 50 awards in this period. He has also been the President of the Editors Guild of India, the only television journalist to hold the post and was chosen a Global leader for tomorrow by the world economic forum in 2000. An alumni of St Xavier's College, Mumbai, he has done his Masters and LLB from Oxford University and has also played first class cricket for the Oxford University team. He has contributed to several books and writes a fortnightly column that appears in seven newspapers.
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