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!”…

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Wanted- A Big Bang Budget

These are extraordinary times and we witness extraordinary phenomena. Three weeks before the Union Budget, when finance ministers customarily crawl under their carapaces, the honourable…

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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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UNTIL DEATH DO US PART

No Amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage. In the last few weeks, eight women have died…

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Panic Button

Reading An Account of the Great Fear, or Grande Peur, that swept across France in July and August of 1789, I was struck by the…

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