Rajdeep Sardesai

January , 2009

Friday , January 23, 2009

Ambition lives eternal in Indian politics


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Ambition lives eternal in Indian politics. A few years ago, Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar was asked whether he still believed that he could be the prime minister of the country one day. The Maratha leader admitted that with just a dozen MPs in Parliament he was an unlikely candidate, but then added, "If Deve Gowda could become prime minister with no experience in national politics, I guess any of us can aspire to the top job!" The singular contribution of the 'humble' farmer from Hardanhalli is that he has ensured that becoming the prime minister of the country is now as much about luck as it is about competence, mass appeal or even political acceptability. The Ambani-Mittal-Tata troika might have created a stir by projecting Narendra Modi's prime ministerial credentials based on his investor-friendly policies, but the fact is that in an era of messy coalitions, there....


Monday , January 12, 2009

An age for politics


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It was reality television of the political kind: on the night of the Jammu and Kashmir election results, father Farooq and son Omar were both pitching for chief ministership on live television. The father was more direct, claiming that he was the natural choice for the job. Son Omar, a little less obvious with his ambition, warning that this time his father would have to deliver unlike previous occasions. When persistently asked if he was giving up his claim to the top job, Omar's reply: "I am only 38, even if I don't become the chief minister, I will still be only 44 in six years!" Did that mean that he was happy to allow his father to be chief minister, "Look, who am I to decide? But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip," said an increasingly irritable Abdullah junior. In the event, there was....


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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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