Master of his Game

It’s hard to be a couch potato in India because (a) most homes have stiff, unyielding sofas; (b) it’s not easy to set yourself up…

Read more

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…

Read more

God of Big Deals

Most of us are lucky if we get fifteen minutes of fame. You can be famous, but not rich. Fame is fleeting, and unless you…

Read more

Going for Gold

Seven and a half minutes into the movie Paan Singh Tomar a journalist asks the eponymous hero, played by Irrfan Khan, why he became a…

Read more

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…

Read more

A State Ravaged

It was beyond the ken of a civilised society, a blood­ spattered vindication of a heartless government’s sudden constitutional piety. The carnage began with a…

Read more

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…

Read more

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE

Indian foreign policy has always suffered from contradictory tugs and pulls, and last month the Government exposed its tendency to over-react to global developments. Israeli…

Read more