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CALCUTTA -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIE

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…

Frozen in the Headlights

Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed…

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…

Japanese says Indian bureaucracy very “inflexible”

CALCUTTA’S INDIANS TAKE ELECTIONS IN STRIDE

Marxist says one-party rule in India is “finished”

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 Most Powerful Women In Indian Business

Early this month I travelled to Agra to walk barefoot around the Taj Mahal, the only wonder of the world that stands in honour of…

Brats at Work

H for Hitler. A for arrogant, R for rascal, I for idiot …” I’m sure many of us remember the “Hari Sadu” commercial about the…

Gender Gag

Sexual harassment can be crude and overt or very subtle, but you know you are being sexually harassed when you experience it. Those around you…

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…