The Don of Dhanbad

DHANBAD’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…

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The Big Squeeze

Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov erected a 50-ft gold-plated statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat, eight years before he gave…

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FRIEND IN NEED

The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…

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AN HEIR SPLITTING LEGACY

The story is as complicated as the whorls on a fingerprint, a ready-made screen-play bursting with grandeur, feudalism, pretension, and the tattered remnants of pomp…

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CLEFT STICK

When Aung san suu kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, two years after the Dalai Lama and two years before Nelson Mandela, she…

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