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…
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MADHYA PRADESH-MAKING OF A MARTYR
While it lasted, last fortnight’s nine-hour hostage hold-up in Congress(l) Member of Parliament Dalbir Singh’s.Delhi apartment generated wild images of urban terrorism on the loose.…
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Hiteswar Saikia was last Fortnight trying to settle into the hottest seat in India-the chief ministers hip of Assam. The diminutive, balding ‘politician had been…
The Burning Of Assam
The fuse has been burning for almost four years and the mood in the state has passed through all the faces of anger, despair and…
FAITH, HOPE AND NO CHARITY
The International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) began with a bang: the National Federation of the Blind led its members in a vociferous agitation in…
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…
MIZORAM-A RETURN TO ARMS
Not for nothing has Mizo National Front (MNF) President Laldenga acquired a reputation for being a cool and calculating man. Towards the end of 1981,…
The Dehuli Massacre “Killing With Impunity”
“My resignation over the Dehuli issue is not important, law and order is,” was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s answer when asked why,…
CASTE ABUSE
It was a grim warning for all users of intemperate language, and particularly for citizens of India who continue to believe that caste bestows special…
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…
KILLING ME SOFTLY
He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odour nor perfume—just strange,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanashi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…
SUFFER THE CHILDREN
The other day, I watched this video of four-year-old Jackson Drew reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) and marvelled…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Partyand Congress seem to have finally woken upto the looming catastrophe of air pollution in our…