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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CALCUTTAÂ -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIEÂ Â
Nowhere else in India do people engulf you as they do in Calcutta. From the moment you step off your train or plane, and begin…
TOURISMÂ – A NEW LOOK AT OLD PLACESÂ Â
Been away from India for some years? Planning to go back this year, family in tow, for a long vacation? If the answer’s ‘Yes’ both…
CALCUTTA IS FOEVER
Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…
The Takeover Man
Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…
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…
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…
TOILET -TRAINING INDIA
On September 25, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi received the Gates Foundation’s Global Goalkeepers Award in New York for his leadership of the Swachh…
SHOW ME THE JOBS
The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs meter. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the…
A FIRST-RATE PROBLEM
India’s economy is lurching like a car with two flat rear tyres. The monsoon has been better than expected: a bumper kharif crop is expected,…
CLOSE,, BUT NO CIGAR
Finance Ministers take on a certain air when they think things are going swimmingly and nothing can rock the economy when it is cruising along.…
FINGER ON THE PULES?
Two-third of indians depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As our farm crisis deepens, the government is tinkering around the edges by pushing irrigation, rural…
KEEP THE BALLAST
Narender Modi’s first term in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two governors of the Reserve Bank of India. The bad blood between…
VIRAL FEVER
Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our mobiles. The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India survey…
Clutching At Straws
We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us to believe that we have seen friendly…