To, Mr Sanjay Dutt, C/O Shri Amar Singh, Samajwadi Party, Camp Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. From: Uttar Pradesh Residents' Welfare Association Camp: Lucknow Dear Sanju Baba, I am writing to express the gratitude of over 2.5 million Lucknowites who are simply overwhelmed by your decision to serve the people of this squalid state. You may be only the 60,375th politician who has sworn to do so, but I think the city has gone speechless as none have sounded as sincere and genuine as you. I apologise for their silence and volunteer to be their interlocutor. You first wowed us as Rocky and then again as Munnabhai. Now, we have been told you have gone behind the camera and just canned your first directorial venture. By getting a Union minister to play the lead role, you have truly achieved a first. Your image, Sanju baba, of being a person with an indefatigable appetite for cinema has only been enhanced by...

It may be tempting to dismiss this as a pointer good enough only to be noticed by mere trivia buffs, but the 2009 General Elections are likely to be the first instance of Uttar Pradesh not fielding a single serving or former Prime Minister from its sprawling constituencies. Staggering as it may sound, but in every single poll since 1952, the dusty plains of the state have had one such candidate, in the process giving the nation eight Prime Ministers. And perhaps it's in this seemingly minor fact lies the tragedy of India's largest and most politically influential state. From Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who laid the foundation of India's public sector and administrative backbone, to Indira Gandhi, the only woman and one of the most powerful Prime Ministers ever; and from our most charismatic and youngest Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to the statesman-like Atal Behari Vajpayee, Uttar Pradesh's influence in politics has been unmatched. In between unique leaders like the principled...

It was an innocuous single column story in a national daily ten years ago which triggered a little chronicled episode of skullduggery in Indian politics. A man, widely heralded as the architect of the great Indian economic revival, a darling of middle-class India, a man known for his integrity and honesty had just lost an election from a constituency where a large number of voters were exactly those who believed, furthered and propagated this image. These voters were largely educated, urbane and had been the biggest beneficiaries of the benefits of his policy changes. Yet, South Delhi Parliamentary constituency, one of the most upper middle-class of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, had decided to hand Dr Manmohan Singh a resounding defeat in his maiden attempt to be an elected represented in Parliament. Politics usually defies the inevitable. It indeed challenges any sort of predictability and is never known to offer any guarantee. Leaders are born and anointed each day yet they...

I have never been more reluctant writing any opinion as I am now. I never glance over my shoulder to check if anyone is peeping into my laptop, just in case I am being read as I write, and being misunderstood. This time I am, almost hoping I had a rear-view mirror on my table which would allow me to check my discomfort. In the past 10 days, ever since gunshots disturbed the hum of Batla House in Delhi's Jamia Nagar that sedentary Friday morning, we've so intensified the practice sessions of a new sport we now play; there is a danger of us becoming world-beaters at it. It's a variation of long jump in athletics...it's called jumping to conclusions. We have done this to every piece of fact. So, when the rightist Hindutva brigade calls the Jamia University's decision to legally support two of their students arrested on terror charges as an example of social acceptance of terrorism, which in...