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…
Mai-Baap re Baap
The Civil service still remain a big draw FRESH OUT of South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi made F a particularly strong speech in Benares in February…
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…
INDIA, THE CLASS ACT
With this kind of rebellious example, how will fair play and right eousness prevail? Won’t the lower castes get out of hand? In this decadent…
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…
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…
NOT SELLING VOLUMES
It was a browser’s dream come true kilometres of books that took hold of the bibliophile’s heart-strings and did not stop tugging for hours. For…
From Flood To Trickle
Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers-last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital’s citizens…
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…
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…
Marching To Discovery
In the coolness of the early morning there is little traffic on National Highway 3. Outward bound from Nasik, the tar stretches infinitely in mottled…
THE DAISY’S PETALS
It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…
CLEFT STICK
When aung san suu kyi won the Nobel Peace Prizein1991, two years after the Dalai Lama and two years before Nelson Mandela, she was hailed…
RED-LETTER DAYS
This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s…