Governor’s Disgrace
EIGHTEEN hours after Haryana Governor Ganapatrao Devji Tapase committed the most undemocratic faux pas in India’s political history, he was cowering on a sofa in…
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Focus- Indian polls start “calm and confident”
16 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Indian voters queued up early on Monday to cast…
India wrestles with the wages of democracy
22 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 22 (Reuters) – “Watch this space.” The website of India’s 112-year-old Congress…
India waits in trepidation for election result
1 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 1 (Reuters) – Indians waited uneasily on Sunday for official results from…
Who’s afraid of India’s Hindu nationalists?
3 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited  NEW DELHI, March 3 (Reuters) – India’s Bharatiya Janata Party appeared tantalisingly close on…
Focus- India set for Hindu-led coalition government
10 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 10 (Reuters) – India was set on Tuesday for a new coalition…
India’s BJP wins power, but daunting task ahead
15 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 15 (Reuters) – Atal Behari Vajpayee received the green light on Sunday…
India’s Vajpayee tries to form coalition
16 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 16 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Hindu-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)…
Focus- Hindu leader Vajpayee takes power in India
19 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 19 (Reuters) – Hindu nationalist leader Atal Behari Vajpayee took office on…
ANALYSIS-Unlikely actors in India’s passion play
25 April 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited  NEW DELHI, April 25 (Reuters) – What do a former housewife who speaks Italian-accented…
ANALYSIS-India’s Sonia Gandhi plays brinkswoman
18 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited  NEW DELHI, May 17 (Reuters) – Sonia Gandhi spent 16 years observing India’s most…
WRAPUP-Indians vote wearily on first election day
5 September 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Little more than half of 166 million eligible voters…
Push to Start
One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen; A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; At ev’ry word…
Hooks & Crooks
I remember a composite satellite photograph of the world taken at night time. One country stood out like a black blotch on a map that…
Eight Innovations That Delighted Consumers and What India can Learn From Them
I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and con- trivance, I found at last that I…
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…
PASSING THE BUCK
Nearly two months after a shocked Parliament was rocked by the Nellie and Gohpur massacres and the bloodbath that 9ad drenched Assam during February’s’ election…
THE BHAJAN BLUDGEON
The Sprawling city that Charles-Edouard le Corbusier had designed for bureaucrats and retired people looked like an army encampment girding up for an enemy onslaught.…
AN HEIR SPLITTING LEGACY
The story is as complicated as the whorls on a fingerprint, a ready-made screen-play bursting with grandeur, feudalism, pretension, and the tattered remnants of pomp…
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi La1 reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
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…
Waterless World
Time was when ‘Glacial Speed’ used to mean ‘very, very slowly’. That has changed forever. We know that our planet is warming. New research shows…
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…