The Q factor and Indian polity

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Who is Q? Twenty years ago even a school dropout would have given you a low down on Ottavio Quattrocchi, his closeness to Sonia Gandhi and thus the Gandhi family and how he made good the payoff in the Bofors gun deal case. Today, an IAS aspirant would be at his wit's end to describe Q - a middle-man who siphoned off crores as Bofors payoff, a good samaritan flogged for being close to the Gandhis or a maverick who has used loopholes in the Indian criminal jurisprudence to come around it. The IAS-aspirant should thank the pliant Central Bureau of Investigation for his dilemma. In fact, Q, the Bofors payoff and the way it has been handled by various Congress regimes is a study in public administration that can come handy for an IAS aspirant. Who knows, one day, he may be part and parcel of the same....

Sholay relived; Gabbar, Thakur etc of IPL

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'Yeh haath lagaam pakad kar ghode ko bhi bitha sakte hain' ...That was Thakur Baldev Singh's bravado after being tricked into the den of Gabbar, whose fear and fables of ruthlessness travelled as far as 'pachas pachas kos dur'. Thakur Baldev Singh lets out the fiercest cry of helplessness and unforeseen fear as Gabbar chops off the Thakur's limbs from his shoulders. Leave out the physicality and gore of this high-voltage Sippyian drama, and you have an encore playing out on the cricketing fields of the Indian Premier League. The horses are aplenty. It's not Ramgarh's prestige at stake that can be safeguarded by Gabbar's goons for two sacks of wheat and corn. Here the stakes are in crores. You can start counting the currency and you will not be through with counting it even after having reached the moon. This Gabbar is more suave -- educated, glamorous,....

Mayawati's Swat; forgotten lessons of a legacy

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On April 13 the people of Jaunpur woke up to a real bad morning. They were not living out a nightmare but a scenario worse than that. They discovered they were living not in Uttar Pradesh but in Talibani Swat. A body hung from a a tree in Jaunpur's Dharnidharpur area. By the time the body was brought down it became clear it was Bahadur Lal Sonkar, the Indian Justice Party (IJP) candidate from Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat. Forty-eight hours before he was done to death and hung Talibani style from a nearby tree, Sonkar had told the press that he feared for his life. He alleged local police top brass was pressurising him to withdraw his candidature. He alleged the police were acting at the behest of local don and BSP candidate from the area, Dhananjay Pratap Singh. This was a classic Marquezian chronicle of a death foretold....

Back to basics: Hey Ram…

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After 11 years, the BJP released the party's election manifesto. When Vajpayee lorded over the then NDA citadel of 22 parties of all hues and ideologies, he carefully chose to ignore party manifesto in deference to coalition dharma. The then NDA under Vajpayee drew out a Common Minimum Programme which served as the basis of governance for the NDA. The NDA agenda for governance conspicuously side-stepped the BJP's three controversial stand on the Uniform Civil Code, Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and Article 370. Vajpayee went on to rule the country for the next five years. What really transpired in the past decade for the BJP to have come out with its own party manifesto, knowing pretty well that the party alone cannot muster a majority in Parliament and may still need partners post-poll to enthrone it. Though Advani carefully rounded off his press conference by declaring that NDA partners,....