September, 2009
Politicians and Paise-Pinching
In this period of competitive austerity, there can be nothing more tiresome than a sanctimonious politician. With netas now offering to travel in the cargo holds of aircrafts to save money, a senior minister called up to say," I haven't taken salary from the government of India for the last five years, what greater evidence can there be of my commitment to austerity!" The minister, of course, forgot to add that such is his personal wealth that a government salary was loose change that he could easily forego. Unfortunately, in the cacophony over our netas' flying preferences, we're ending up engaging in almost farcical paise-pinching. The fact is that if the government and the Congress party is serious about curbing expenditure in times of drought, then flying cattle (sorry, aam admi) class on a low cost airline is hardly the answer. The saving of a few thousand rupees is....
YSR: The one man show in Andhra
A decade ago when Sharad Pawar was quitting the Congress over the Sonia Gandhi foreign origins issue, he told a group of journalists, "In the Congress party, there is no place for genuine mass leaders. There is only the high command and the loyal followers." That was 1999. Ten years later, it seems that Pawar was both right and wrong. He was right to the extent that in the Congress, the high command is ubiquitous and the Supreme Leader is unchallenged. He was wrong that the Congress could no longer throw up a regional satrap. Y.S.Rajashekhar Reddy was proof that it still possible to be a virtual one man show in state politics, and yet survive in the Congress. When YSR became chief minister in 2004, he was fighting both history and geography. Congress chief ministers in Andhra had been practiced in the art of musical chairs. The previous....




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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