Insecure netas and the cartoon ban chorus

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The grand old man of Indian cartooning, RK Laxman, has a delightful anecdote that embodies the charm of political cartooning. Soon after the 1962 Sino-Indian war, Laxman lampooned then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his much-maligned defence minister Krishna Menon. That evening, Laxman got a call from the Prime Minister's Office. Picking up the phone, he was petrified of being at the receiving end of Nehru's ire. He need not have worried. A suave, gentle voice said: "Mr Laxman, I so enjoyed your cartoon this morning. Can I have a signed enlarged copy to frame?" They don't make them like Jawaharlal any more. Instead, we now have a political class that is so incensed with the concept of cartoons that they have ensured the removal of all caricatures from political science textbooks. What started off as anger at a cartoon depicting Ambedkar atop a snail while drafting the Constitution....

Mixed feelings for Sachin the MP

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In a nation of multiple gods, mortals run the risk of being elevated to divinity. With cricket as contemporary India's mass religion, Sachin Tendulkar has had to live with a demi-god status for years now. It's a burden he has been conscious of, rarely being drawn into controversy. Not for Tendulkar: Ganguly-like histrionics of baring his chest on the Lords balcony or Virat Kohli-like abuse on reaching a century. Through good times and bad, Tendulkar has gone about doing just one thing with absolute single-mindedness: scoring a mountain of runs. He is the boy next door who has become the God of cricket through the sheer weight of 'pure' achievement. Which is why his decision to accept a Rajya Sabha nomination in the eminent citizens' category is being seen by some as somewhat incongruous with his exalted position. Tendulkar as a backbencher MP is seen to lower his stature....

Humble tips for choosing a new President

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Five years ago, one 'almost' broke the story of India's next President. Amidst feverish speculation, a source sent an sms: "Congratulations! India is getting its first woman president and she is from your home state!" My instinctive reaction was to think of Nirmala Deshpande, the long-standing Gandhian and powerful votary of Indo-Pak peace. We even flashed her name as a likely choice. To be honest, Pratibha Patil, then Rajasthan Governor, was one of the last names on our list of possible Maharashtrian women who would occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan. As it turned out, Mrs Patil's near-anonymity and relative low profile proved to be her biggest asset. In the last five years, Mrs Patil has lived up to her reputation of being the silent, almost nondescript President. Over this period, one cannot recall a single major speech or landmark initiative which has been taken by Rashtrapati Bhavan. She may be India's....

Indecisiveness renders Antony's honesty hollow

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It is not without reason that AK Antony is referred to as 'Saint' Antony. When you've spent four decades in public life and don't have a whiff of a financial scandal associated with your name, then sainthood is truly deserved. Last year, Mr Antony declared just Rs 1.8 lakh in personal assets while his wife declared Rs 30 lakh and a Wagon R car. By ministerial standards, Mr Antony would clearly be well below the poverty line. Such is his paranoia about personal probity that he did not even wear a watch when he was the chief minister of Kerala in the 1970s for fear of being tarred with the brush of 'materialism'. But does this obsessive desire to be seen above any form of inducement make for a good minister? It's a question that is being asked again in the wake of the fallout of the Army Chief controversy. ....

How dictators run the government in a democracy

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If you think a week is a long time in politics, just forget it. In India, it can take just a few hours for a zero to become a hero and vice versa. On the morning of Wednesday 14th of March, Dinesh Trivedi was a relatively nondescript minister in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet, elevated to the post of Railway Minister through the munificence of Mamata Banerjee. By that evening, he was the top trending name on Twitter and was even being eulogised on national media as a new age reformer! By midnight though, it was clear that the ever-smiling Dineshbhai, a Kolkata-based businessman-turned-Trinamool factotum, was set to earn a more dubious distinction: the first Railway Minister to lose his job within a week of presenting the Railway Budget. Trivedi may well see himself in rather grandiose terms as a modern day Bhagat Singh who put the nation before his....

A tale of two Rahuls

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Politics is the original 'dirty picture', cruel and ruthless. Last week, on the day the legendary Rahul Dravid announced his retirement from international cricket, an sms doing the rounds said: "Why has the wrong Rahul retired?" The Uttar Pradesh defeat has suddenly led to obituaries being written of Rahul Gandhi, the same Rahul whose each and every move, during the elections, was followed by a frenzied media. Perhaps, for a few days, the political Rahul might have felt like his cricketing namesake. After all, soon after the Australia tour debacle, we had cricket fans calling for the removal of the 'senior' players. They conveniently forgot that Dravid had scored four remarkable centuries in five games only months earlier in England. Politics, like cricket, can be extraordinarily fickle. That's where though, I am afraid, the comparisons between the two Rahuls might end. Dravid, after all, represents a triumph of....

Modi's 'Sadbhavana' and the horror of 2002

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Has Gujarat really moved on ten years after the terrible violence of 2002? The answer depends on who the question is asked to. Chief minister Narendra Modi, for example, claims to have moved on to the point where he refuses to take questions on the past. In February 2002, Modi was a relatively low profile RSS pracharak turned chief minister with no administrative experience. The riots transformed him into a tough-talking 'saviour' of the Hindus; he even undertook a Gujarat 'Gaurav' yatra, though one is uncertain what was the 'pride' involved in failing to prevent the deaths of more than 1000 Gujaratis, apart from exploiting religious sentiment to garner votes. Today, Modi has undertaken a 'Sadbhavana' yatra, has marginalized the VHP, is seen as a potential BJP prime ministerial candidate in 2014 and is a chief minister with a formidable reputation for good governance. Travel through the riot-hit....

Decoding the media's Priyanka mania

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In 1999, we experienced a 'television moment'. We were covering Sonia Gandhi's Amethi campaign when we happened to meet her daughter Priyanka. For the next several hours, Priyanka took us on a whirlwind tour across the constituency. There were fewer camera crews then, so there wasn't a mad scramble for sound bites. Priyanka was made for television: attractive, charming and spontaneous. She even had lunch with us under a banyan tree, spoke at length on her family legacy and clearly revelled in the public glare. It was probably her first ever TV interaction but she didn't miss a beat. We were, well, bowled over. Thirteen years later, little seems to have changed. She still offers an infectious smile, wears colourful designer khadi saris, relates to the crowd with great warmth and willingly speaks to the camera. The travelling media (now more a circus) still hangs onto her every....

Rushdie row takes one back to the politics of 1980s

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Is 2011-12, 1988-89 all over again? The near farce over Salman Rushdie's non-appearance in Jaipur, whether in person or even in a videolink, would suggest so. Rewind to the late 1980s. A beleaguered Rajiv Gandhi government, its image dented by the Bofors kickback accusations, chooses to ban Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses'. India, in fact, had the 'distinction' of becoming the first country in the world to ban the book, perhaps before anyone in the country had even read it. Worse, on the 24th of February 1989, barely 10 days after the infamous fatwa delivered against Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, 12 people were killed in police firing in Bombay. The police claimed it was forced to open fire when a crowd of around 10,000 Muslims protesting outside the British Consulate began to turn violent. 1989 was also the year of the horrific Bhagalpur riots when more than a....

The 'Anna' factor in 2012 polls

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Irrespective of how one views the Anna Hazare movement, there is little doubt that the one feeling it invoked in the political class was one of fear: the fear of losing control over a system that they have presided over for decades. It is, therefore, no surprise that with the 74-year-old activist having retired hurt for now, many politicians have recovered their poise. It's almost as if a safety valve has been found to relieve politicians from the pressure cooker situation in which they found themselves throughout 2011. Elections provide the perfect outlet for politicians to express themselves in familiar terrain but is it really business as usual? As the campaign for the 2012 elections takes off in the ultimate political battleground of UP, there are straws in the wind to suggest that the Anna effect may well outlast its founder. Take the case of Mayawati. Over the last....