Fair & Ugly

Mamata Express: You can't stop her anymore

editor@ibnlive.com — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:39:27 +0530

There hasn't been any full stop in the political story of West Bengal for thirty-three years. After the civic poll results were declared, we can almost see that punctuation mark

Jyoti Basu, the last Bhadralok Communist

editor@ibnlive.com — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:10:19 +0530

Some would say God is not qualified to judge Jyoti Basu because he had never--not even in his weakest moments--uttered a prayer for an intervention by the Almighty. Even Karl

Salute Thee Mumbai

editor@ibnlive.com — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:41:14 +0530

Some cities are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. Many years ago, just out of my teens, I had alighted from a neat double-decker

Left in the lurch

editor@ibnlive.com — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:36:52 +0530

There has been a tectonic shift in Indian politics. The official Left has been squeezed out. The Congress has transferred its weight a little to the Left to occupy the

FORGET THE NEIGHBOUR

editor@ibnlive.com — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 01:35:49 +0530

Occasionally, foreign policy commentators view Indo-Pak relations through the prism of the diplomatic environment prevailing in the early Nineties. Those days the Indo-Pak hyphen was a key aspect of the

Off The Wall

editor@ibnlive.com — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:12:56 +0530

"Before you judge me try hard to love me" from Childhood. Comparing Michael Jackson to the prodigious Mozart gives undue respect to the pop genre. But there's no

How the BJP failed Advani

editor@ibnlive.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:43:07 +0530

It took almost five years and a demoralizing electoral defeat for the Bharatiya Janata Party to realize the essence of what L.K.Advani has been emphasizing at every forum since the

Lessons from the 14th Lok Sabha

editor@ibnlive.com — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:33:17 +0530

Now that we have said good-bye to the Fourteenth Lok Sabha, there is need to evaluate the lacunae in our parliamentary functioning. There are fears that if we further postpone

Letter from a Post-Terror Voter

editor@ibnlive.com — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:24:45 +0530

Dear Mr/Ms Politician I just wanted to remind you that Mumbai bled last week and lay helplessly maimed and crippled. The pictures went out everywhere of a city unable

For Sanity's Sake

editor@ibnlive.com — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:54:52 +0530

A blast is a blast is a blast. Let's not forget this fundamental premise when we get into a post-encounter discussion on the Delhi blasts. The facts are too cold,

Honour and Prejudice

editor@ibnlive.com — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:16:05 +0530

Aarushi Talwar's gruesome murder in the hands of her father is not a bizarre, isolated case. It is the result of a deep social malady. Such a murder was waiting

Caste in Stone

editor@ibnlive.com — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:43:09 +0530

Once upon a time, the ruling class wanted to gift its progeny the right to enslave others. What was meant to be a rationally thought out equitable division of labour

Where Atithis Fear To Tread

editor@ibnlive.com — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:29:47 +0530

The Goa debate seems to be moving away from the basic fact that Scarlett Keeling has been murdered. There is no way you can wish away the body and the

Waiting for a political alphabet

editor@ibnlive.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:35:34 +0530

In an era when politics is becoming more about communication, a competent economic administrator like Manmohan Singh is bound to be lost in translation. His government will appear to be

Bengal's minority report puts CPM in the red

editor@ibnlive.com — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:07:53 +0530

Buddhadeb called in the army in Kolkata, but let Nandigram simmer.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee invited the Army over within hours of minority community rioters taking over

Left Jingoism

editor@ibnlive.com — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:27:56 +0530

Chauvinism can also be defined as a volatile virtue exploited by the insecure within their ethnic territorial limits. It expresses itself through militancy and occasionally through ugly paper-snatching and distasteful

Shooting Stars

editor@ibnlive.com — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:50:24 +0530

You can't have 21st century icons smelling of decadent, putrescent stardom and proudly declaiming that the world revolves only around them. You can't have a really big star ingeniously pushing

Blog: Not so mulayam with Mulayam

editor@ibnlive.com — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 07:06:42 +0530

It's a decision, which defies logic and political sense. Mulayam Singh Yadav is a politician for whom you cannot even shed crocodile tears but the Congress has no explanation why

Defection dementia

editor@ibnlive.com — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:52:49 +0530

One of the country's oldest, most wretched and most primitive lunatic asylums is located in Ranchi. As though that identity tag wasn't enough, now Jharkhand's politicians are infusing lunacy into

The importance of being Sidhu

editor@ibnlive.com — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 08:55:36 +0530

You just have to spread the message anywhere in Punjab that Sidhu is expected and that his name is there on the guest-list. There is no easier way of collecting

Congress clueless in UP

editor@ibnlive.com — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:19:41 +0530

The Congress approach to the Uttar Pradesh elections has been baffling, to say the least. Three months before the elections, the young man who should be the General marshalling his