Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the state of India’s economy, saying the country was facing crises that were avoidable. “Our nation today is experiencing difficult times. Our farmers are facing an acute crisis, our aspirational youth are not finding opportunities, and the economy is growing […]
National affairs
House in crisis: Four reasons why Parliament is becoming irrelevant
Every morning, a familiar spectacle. Parliament begins, uproar ensues, MPs compete with runner Usain Bolt in a high-speed relay to the well, and immediately the People’s House shuts down. Another day of taxpayer money wasted, debate on life-affecting legislation stymied, and yet another nail hammered into the coffin of Westminster-style democracy in India. Parliamentary […]
Unmade in India: the story of Tirupur’s decline
The city of Tirupur was always known as an entrepreneur’s paradise — a place where unskilled labour arrived from across the country to receive on-the-job training before ultimately starting their own micro to small units to service India’s largest knitwear export cluster. Demand was always growing, labour was continuously learning and moving up […]
Congress Plenary 2018: A young India’s tryst with destiny
The Congress party is looking to Rahul Gandhi, the first Congress president of this century, to kindle the hopes and aspirations of a young India In the 2014 general elections, one in five Indians voted for the Congress party, while nearly one in three voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi. […]
When NiMo Meets NaMo by Rajdeep Sardesai
When NiMo meets NaMo One good thing in the often joyless times in which we live is the flowering of satire and cartooning on social media (yes, RK Laxman’s legacy is alive and kicking) For the last week, my whatsapp has been buzzing, not so much with breaking news, as with ‘breaking jokes’. Every few […]
Nehru vs Patel: Unity in Diversity
HISTORY, UNDER BJP rule, has developed a surprising tendency to dominate our national discourse. Not only has Indian history increasingly become ‘ground zero’ in the battle of narratives between Hindutvavadis and pluralists, it is being wielded as the BJP’s weapon of choice against the Congress. Prime Minister’s Narendra Modi’s excoriating speech in the Lok Sabha […]
Lies & Finger-Pointing: BJP’s only response to PNB scam
Three days have passed since the news of the PNB scam hit the airwaves, but the BJP government is yet to answer even one question out of the multiple ones that the Congress party has posed. Instead, the government has deployed its ministers and spokespersons to try and deflect this as a “UPA-era […]
‘A glory has departed’: Nehru’s forgotten speech on Gandhi’s assassination
‘Ultimately, the hand of a child of his struck him down’, said the first prime minister, referring to Godse in the Constituent Assembly on February 2, 1948. Jawaharlal Nehru’s extempore broadcast on All India Radio announcing the news of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination on January 30, 1948, “The light has gone out of our lives and there […]
On Auschwitz liberation day, a bunch of thoughts for India
Fascism grows in crises. And it triggers crises to thrive. Anyone who has studied the history of fascism can say that with a certain degree of authority. And anyone who has been following the happenings in India in the last few years can certainly spot signs of it. But it’s really in the last couple […]
BJP gains in polls after every riot, says Yale study
While many within the Congress blame its electoral debacle to the party’s obsession with “minority appeasement”, a recent study conducted by three political scientists of the Yale University claim that had Congress lost all close elections between 1962 and 2000, there could have been 10% more communal riots in the country. Gareth Nellis, Michael Weaver, […]