THE HUMAN TRAGEDY
It is a war without end, a no-win situation in which nobody can provide answers to some questions: How long will this go on? Which…
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CALCUTTAÂ -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIEÂ Â
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…
TOURISMÂ – A NEW LOOK AT OLD PLACESÂ Â
Been away from India for some years? Planning to go back this year, family in tow, for a long vacation? If the answer’s ‘Yes’ both…
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!”…
Modi Unlimited
Coasting down the six-lane highway from Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar, wheels barely touching the asphalt, it is tempting to forget that you are in the India…
Energy Shock: India Story Risks Running Out Of Steam
This has been a summer of discontent, and the portents are not auspicious. One day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced his second underwhelming Cabinet…
The Takeover Man
Most of us are cursed with poor memory. We need episodic markers to help us measure our lives from one significant remembrance to another. Our…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
STONE AGE SHAKTI
That Trite phrase ‘as old as the hills’ has suddenly taken on startling significance in relation to a thread that runs through Hindu beliefs: the…
The Method Man
Gujarat’s Chief Minister tells Chaitanya kalbag in a wide-ranging interview that policy and process make a heady development cocktail Narendra Modi is not a tall…
THE DAISY’S PETALS
It’s a NAIL-BITER. I predicted in another column that the Lok pal Search Committee of eight eminent persons might cap a five-year slow waltz just…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
HOLLOWING OUT
Privatisation will work only when the government sells more than 50 per cent of a state-owned company’s capital to the public and relinquishes management control.…
SELL SELL SELL
Two numbers speak eloquently about our schizophrenia over privatisation: the Rs 2.11trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs); and…
BHAG PIYUSH BHAG
Piyush Goyal is a chartered accountant, lawyer, former investment banker, former Bharatiya Janata Party treasurer, and a go-getter. Goyal, who likes taking leadership courses (currently…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narender Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
TOO BIG TO FAIL
Independence day is a good excuse for some economic chest-thumping. We should be proud that lndia is a free-enterprise democracy. Imagine the world’s burden if…
Glass Half-Full?
We can hope that in the run-up to the next general election we will not suffer the type of jolts to our nervous systems that…
VIRAL FEVER
Start exercise your smartphone thumb, because the next big election will be fought on our mobiles. The latest Internet and Mobile Association of India survey…
RED-LETTER DAYS
This is a year of anniversaries , some unpleasant, some prescient, some momentous. CE 2019 is important not only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s…
NaMo the FMCG
If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd…
Off the Blocks
For the second time in five years, I was struck by how apposite Rud-yard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ is in relation to Narendra Modi. At one…