Governor’s Disgrace

EIGHTEEN hours after Haryana Governor Ganapatrao Devji Tapase committed the most undemocratic faux pas in India’s political history, he was cowering on a sofa in…

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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…

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Earthy Tales

Last week I was on a flight to Mumbai About two hours in, the captain an- nounced that there was unseasonal heavy rain ahead and…

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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…

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DESERTS – GREENING OF THAR

Lush vegetation in the Thar? Groves jamun trees? Mighty rivers the size of the Ganga and Indus? Seasons of monsoon-like rainfall? None of this is…

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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…

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Spate Of Senseless Tragedies

Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…

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STONE AGE SHAKTI

That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…

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THE BHAJAN BLUDGEON

The Sprawling city that Charles-Edouard le Corbusier had designed for bureaucrats and retired people looked like an army encampment girding up for an enemy onslaught.…

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