Civil War
UNION Home Minister Prakash Chand Sethi has elevated the art of governance to a fine degree of pettifoggery Political interference in the bureaucracy is not…
Book Review: My Years in an Indian PrisonÂ
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the…
Japanese says Indian bureaucracy very “inflexible”Â
24 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 24 (Reuter) – Japan is keen on expanding investment in India but…
Japan drags itself towards an open rice market
13 December 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 13 (Reuter) – Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura said Tokyo had every intention…
Marxist says one-party rule in India is “finished”
 15 June 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited CALCUTTA, India, June 15 (Reuter) – India is not likely to see a return to…
READING THE BAR CODES
“UPON MY WORD: India’s prisons are stuck in a time warp” STRANGE HOW time’s machine travels back and forth at warp speed. Two hundred and…
BUREAUCRACY-THE POWER THAT BE
All private secretaries to Union ministers are equal, but S.R. Bhatia is more equal. Bhatia is the private secretary to Prakash Chand Sethi, the Union…
A BATTLE SUPREME
Titled Judiciary: At tacks and Survival, the speech had been long in coming, the speaker delayed, first by an attack of diabetes in March and…
MYSTERIOUS U-TURN
Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…
JAGANNATH MISHRA-CLEARED BY THE COURT
HE INDIA-RUBBER man, Jagannath Mishra, had done it again. For months, the Bihar chief minister’s political fate had hung in the balance while the Supreme…
CHEATING THE HANGMAN
Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…
FINDING A VOICE
Politics cinema, like the new wave of the mid-’70s, has long acquired a pejorative meaning in India. At most, a political film that catches the…
HANGING FIRE
The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…
UNTIL DEATH DO US PART
No Amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage. In the last few weeks, eight women have died…
The Enemy Within
Iran’s much-vaunted Islamic revolution appears to have finally spilled over into India. Chanting Allah-o- Akbar and wielding primitive weapons like lathis bristling with nails, bicycle…
SNAG IN THE ROPE
Anticlimax has become the boon companion of the Supreme Court. When the court reopened on July 18 after its summer vacation, it was shadowed by…
Scrabbling Away From the Abyss
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
