Missing Murthy
THE INFOSYS ITS FOUNDERS SO PAINSTAKINGLY BUILT IS IN DANGER OF LOOKING ORDINARY BY GOUTAM DAS AND CHAITANYA KALBA On a sunny October afternoon at…
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From center half to Referee
Yogi Deveshwar’s crack team converted every penalty corner into a goal. Yogesh Chander Deveshwar thinks that ITC Ltd. could be a model for running India’s…
Panel Discussion
LAST CHANCE TO Budget 2012 is the final opportunity for the UPA to set the economy on as next GET IT RIGHT Years’ exercise will…
Ajit Gulab Chand (INTERVIEW)
Ajit Gulabchand was delighted that his second grandson was born on his own 64th birthday. He had just come away from a meeting with a…
Hate Figure
The CBI has become exceptionally proactive in its coal scam probe ever since Ranjit Sinha took charge, fueling corporate fears of a witch hunt. By…
“Necessity is the mother of innovation.”
Innovation in India is not just about patents filed but about affordable, scalable solutions. Clockwise (top to bottom): Thomas Stewart of Booz & Company, Som…
Who will Blink First?
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s public display of annoyance with Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao indicates the extent of their differences. By SHWETA PUNJ …
The Myth of Privacy and the Fragility of Freedom
“You don’t have to be a ‘sting journalist’ to spy on somebody. Camera photographs and video are now ubiquitous, We never know who is recording…
The Perpetual Victim Syndrome of Hindutva
How far can you reach back in time if you want to right wrongs, real or perceived? Look back through history and nearly every nation…
RIDING THE TIGER
In November 1937, an extraordinary essay titled, ‘The Rashtrapati’, appeared in a respected Calcutta journal. Written under the pseudonym Chanakya, it soon became known that…
Apologies and Atonement
The 2019 election campaign was set to be the biggest, costliest, and dirtiest in our democratic history. In this dog-eat-dog atmosphere, no politician can afford…
Those Whom We Voted In
The dust has settled, and a new government will take oath this evening. We have just elected the 17th Lok Sabha. Can we expect a…
The Merry Monk & His Flock
The Dalai Lama, who completed 60 years of exile in India in March, is usually humorous and candid. Last weekend, however, shortly after World Refugee…
Into the Poisoned Well
Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled ₹20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced. This…
Hara-Kiri Congress Style
The 48-year-old challenger is flat on his back on the canvas. The crowd is cheering on the champion, who is 20 years older but lighter…
Here’s the Stuff of Legend
In 2018, India’s per-capita GDP was $2,015.60, according to the World Bank. This makes sense – our economy is currently sized at $2.7 trillion, and…
Anti-Social Media Elections 19
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I…
Arrested Development?
The good news is that everybody – the IMF was the latest to fall in line on Tuesday – agrees with the RBI that India’s…
An Example Made of Kashmir
On August 5, the Indian government declared that Jammu and Kashmir is no longer an exception. On August 5, the Indian government decided to make…
Aal Izz Well – So They Say
It is amazing how things come around. I was listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Houston speech. After speaking in several Indian languages, Modi said,…
#MainBhiHindustani
Loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain After five years of ‘achhe din’, you would…
Sauce for the Gander
The abrogation of Article 370 and the five-week-old lockdown in Srinagar have triggered tremors 3,000 km away in Nagaland. Home minister Amit Shah repeated over…
Which way’II You Swing?
Remarkably, after seven decades of spirited democracies, three leaders, Narendra Modi, Narendra Modi. I am not considering Lal Bahadur Shastri or Rajiv Gandhi (whose only…
The Many Lilas of Rama
The name ‘Ram’ rolls easily off the tongue, whichever corner of India you come from, whichever Indian language your mother taught you. Although Rama and…
Let the Ombudsmen Bloom
Will the amended Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act happen just before the polls? We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to…
Who Lost This Election? The Economy, Stupid
Narendra Modi’s pulverising victory has wiped out every semblance of opposition in Parliament’s lower house. The Congress’ humiliation is so total that it will fail…
Wage War by Other Means
Political power grows out of the barrel of agon. More precisely, it grows from the air-to-air missiles mounted on an upgraded, but aging, MiG-21 Bison…
Kashmir is more than land, it is people
I am not surprised that the Kashmir valley is on the boil. The surprise is that it has taken so many months after the de…
Chalte Raho Pyare… Fauji
Chalte Raho Pyare Fauj. That is what the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is fondly called in police parlance. Cynics would call them cannon fodder.…
The Acrobat is Wobbling
Let me put it simply: the government is performing two balancing acts simultaneously. To get to this perilous position, it has time again turned precedent…
Do Poor Choices Win Votes?
William Safire must be turning in his grave. The language maven and Richard Nixon speechwriter came up with the nattering nabobs of negativism’ phrase that…
Unique Question: Will We Have a Life After Aadhaar?
If you are of a certain age, and not one of the millennial Indians who will turn 18 this year and be eligible to vote,…
Of Fudges and Shakes
I like only one kind of fudge and one kind of shake, the chocolate kind. And I especially dislike fudges and shakes of the economic…
Punching Below Our Weight
Earlier this month, the United Nations issued its first set of ‘diya’ postage stamps to mark Diwali and the triumph of good over evil. It…
Lies, Damned Lies, & Forwards
There is more than one way to skin a cat. We will be travelling to the outer reaches of credulity as election fever rises over…
Wings Clipped, Fighting Unfit
Nobody with even a rudimentary interest in national security will dispute that the Indian Air Force (IAF) needs more firepower. Currently, it has 600 combat…
Cleaning Up India With Gandhiji
The smartest thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi did was to hitch the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) to the aura of Mahatma Gandhi. From its official…
Picture of a Healthier India
Sometime over the next few weeks – most likely in his Independence Day speech – Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch what has already…
Hard selling Body Politic?
Next week, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes his fifth Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, he might want to remind us that in…
A Crisis of Extreme Gravity
With barely nine months to go before the Lok Sabha election, how serious is the crisis in our banking system? Put simply, it is not…
Winning the Vote of Overconfidence
Politics was reduced to raucous pandering: if Modi’s speech was short of a clearer vision of New India, Rahul did not lay out a blueprint…
It’s the Magical Mystery Tour
The government’s ‘Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikas’ (Clean Intent, Right Development) campaign is expectation management in an election year. Nineteen months after demonetisation, we still do…
Modi, The Last-Mile Man
They say the best way to persuade somebody is to plant an idea in their head and get them to start speaking about it as…
Caste Iron Chains: Why We Struggle To Break Free
Four years ago, I wrote in my first Needle’s Eye column that predictions about caste not dominating the 2014 elections were all hogwash. If you…
The Thirty-nine Steps: Why PM Has to Worry About Recency
In business, especially in human-resource management, appraisers are cautioned to evaluate an individual’s or department’s performance over a sustained period and not let ‘recency’, the…
Holding Up Half the Sky: From the Son Valley to a Cockpit
In the summer of 1982, I travelled to Sidhi district in Madhya Pradesh to report on a fascinating archaeological expedition for India Today. An Indo-US…
Bench Strength: Why The Judiciary Must Pick Itself Up
What goes around, comes around. Two interesting things happened earlier this month, both concerning the Supreme Court. Starting February 6, Chief Justice Dipak Miara appeared…
Everything is Hunky-dory, Don’t You Agree?
The prime minister’s speech at the World Economic Forum was sweeping and aspirational (one observer said he was “preaching to the choir”). He presented India…
State Elections: Swimming In The Same Cess-Pool
Here is my poll prediction: if, and only if, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins power in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will roll…
Let’s Get the Better of the Rest of the World
As we chatted over our morning cups of tea, glancing at the dailies and their dose of grim news, and trying to balance the latest…
Why There is So Much More at Stake Than Gujar
“Those who make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”-Voltaire Absurdity was piled atop absurdity as seven weeks of vitriol ended in a splash…
On Trumpreneurship and the Gujarat Way
While waiting for the 10,400 policemen who were deployed this week to guard Ivanka Trump in Hyderabad to go back to their regular duties of…
Looking Through The Smoke Into The Mirror
On Tuesday came news that India’s exports contracted for the first time in 13 months in October: Our trade deficit has widened to a near…
Connecting the Bright Spots in India’s Dark Education Sky
It is easy to be overwhelmed by the mess in our education system. It is good to keep in mind, though, that there are many…
Need to Focus on Teaching Our Teachers to Revamp Education System
The Puranas say it took the gods and demons a thousand years, with some help from Vishnu who took on the form of a tortoise,…
Are We Fooling Ourselves About Our Schools?
In the spirit of Diwali and new beginnings, I started this column determined to find good news stories in our school education system, because that…
Spare A Thought For The Poor Indian
In his book ‘How the BJP Wins’, Prashant Jha describes how Narendra Modi has led the Bharatiya Janata Party to near-invincibility by transmogrifying himself again…
Our Fizz-and-Pop Economy: ‘It is Like Building a Ship While Sailing’
Those of us in our sixties, including our prime minister, will remember the goli soda. You used a little wooden gizmo to push in a…
By The Government, Of The Government, For The Election
Cabinet reshuffles seem to generate more excitement than the announcement of cricket teams. So we know what the best game in town is. We knew…
Will India Shake Off Its Grand Delusions?
“Tis the season for chest-thumping. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is unquestionably on top of the heap. But what a heap it is. Over the…
Why We Must Not Give Up The Freedom to Think
“August is the month of revolution,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his monthly radio talk a few days ago. Wednesday was the 75th anniversary…
A Civil Way to Bell The Cat
In early June, a few weeks before the launch of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an informal meeting with…
A History Lesson, As India Looks At The Future
Right now, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has the option to strengthen governance, really start to fix the country’s major economic problems, and reinforce our institutions …
How to Talk to a Chinese Ghost, and Other Lessons in Power
In China, our difficult and, to many of us, menacing neighbour, they say “If you speak a lot you are more likely to say something…
Midsummer Night’s Dream: No GST Nightmare Please!
Midnight has an eerie and slightly occult hold on our imaginations. It is the hour when magic is supposed to take place, when the old…
Don’t Ignore Signs of Economic Slowdown
How many different kinds of evidence do we need to convince ourselves that the economy is slowing dramatically? Consumer price index (CPI) inflation fell to…
Don’t Stop Listening to the Still Small Voice
As a matter of fact it was exactly 50 years ago today, on June 11967, that the Beatles released their epochal Sgt Pepper album, so…
We Owe it To Our Jawans in CRPF
April started with dairy farmer Pehlu Khan’s lynching on a national highway not far from New Delhi, and ended with the killings of two alleged…
Will This Tiger Change its Saffron Stripes?
Can you imagine Pope Francis being named the president of Brazil, which has the world’s largest Roman Catholic population (and the same number of people…
How to Win (And Whip Up a Few Crowds Along the Way)
As our all-too-brief winter slips into a warm spring, we are headed-once again-for another Judgement Day in our interminable elections. But, just as we start…
UP for Grabs: Prize Catch or Poisoned Chalice?
The longer the course of a long-drawn election, the coarser the language gets. The strain is starting to tell in Uttar Pradesh. Both Prime Minister…
Trumpism & Moditva: A Parallax View of Past, Present & Future
There are some remarkable similarities-and dissimilarities-between Narendra Modi and Donald Trump. Both men ran insurgent presidential campaigns that upended convention-al political structures (I use ‘presidential’…
Dynasties And Caste: Will Things Ever Change?
Brushing up on some history, I read about how powerful dynasties in the 8th and 9th centuries fought themselves into exhaustion over the kingdom of…
India’s Intelligence Quotient: Is Pathankot a Deflection or Inflection Point?
President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union speech at 9 pm in Washington and New York on Tuesday That is the same…
Searching For Noble Thoughts: A Wish List for Modi
Aa no bhadraha Krikava yantu vishwataha (Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides). It seems fitting to look ahead at 2017 with this…
‘Note For the Poor: All This Suffering Is for You
Most of us ordinary mortals who work for scant rewards and only wish to enjoy, undisturbed, the fruits of our labour, are caught up in…
Has Unstoppable Modi Met Immutable India?
Ernest Hemingway wrote more than once for the Toronto Daily Star on the absurdity and tragedy of German hyperinflation after the Treaty of Versailles sealed…
Will PM Modi Drive the Stake into India’s Black Heart?
It was ironical but fitting, with the rising belligerence around us, that the best thing Prime Minister Narendra Modi could do for India was the…
A Midterm Morality Check: How is Modi’s India Doing?
In the preface to his 1995 book ‘How Good People Make Tough Choices’, ethicist Rushworth M. Kidder wrote that when he interviewed twenty-two leading thinkers…
Brand India: How Loudly Can It Lay Siege?
Early this week I attended a talk on Nation Branding by David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School. Nation branding is the…
Modi’s Baloch Move Spotlights Pak as a Failing Client State
On September 18, a young racehorse won a scorching victory at the Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong. After loitering the entire race, the horse…
The Best Time for Modi to Break Out of Terror Logjam
As usual, after a major terrorist attack, we have had a few days of jingoism. One journalist tweeted that “this India’ has moved on from…
Time for Modi to Roll Out Congress-Mukt Reform Agenda
I woke up before dawn today to an email from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office. It listed his major activities over the previous week. He…
What Goes Around Comes Around: A Few Lessons
History is fascinating. It always circles around. A lot of history is about culture and knowledge. It is also about the gaining and losing of…
‘Does the Modi government have its finger on India’s pulse?
Maybe I’m starting to see ghosts in dark corners. Why else do we have Mahant Avaidyanath, the late head of the Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur,…
Blood On the Chinars: Ordinariness of Death in Kashmir
All of us view the past through a very limiting lens. We move the glass over people and events, and we deceive ourselves into thinking…
Modi Has to Steer India Through a Narrower World
And time yet to revel in a plentiful monsoon, never mind that food prices continue to rise, and tomatoes now cost more than Rs 100…
Bharat Mukt Congress before Congress Mukt Bharat.
Around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was delivering one of his trademark stump speeches in Allahabad last Monday, breathing fire and arms akimbo, the…
Two Years of Modinomics: Silk Purse or Sow’s Ear?
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on June 8, he will represent the fastest-growing economy in the…
Saffron Wash? Not Quite, Not Yet
Why the regional thoroughbreds are the real winners in the assembly election sweepstakes The scene for India’s regional politics was scripted by Connemara Natarajan Annadurai…
Modi Going on Three: Why Doesn’t It Feel Like Party Time?
Have you noticed how the sound and fury over the latest sensation vanish from our idiot boxes at the wave of some unseen wand? Does…
How the Cold Hand of the Law Falls Across Two Centuries on Our Freedoms
Twice in the past two and a half years, the Supreme Court has ruled with a 19th-century mindset on vital 21st-century issues affecting personal freedom…
For B’day Bash, Modi Must Seize the Economic Day
It says something for the Congress that Sonia Gandhi has been its president for nearly 18 years, a longer, unbroken stretch than anybody in the…
Can Modi Lead India’s Farmers Out of Their Maze?
A train carrying 2.5 million liters of water has just pulled into parched Latur in Maharashtra. This is not the first time Latur has been…
Time to Dust Off the Chor Minar for Baba Ramdev
The squat and circular Chor Minar sits condensed thieves. It’s time it was handed over to Baba Ramdev. The gurupreneur, whose booming consumer goods empire…
The Assam Elections : The Politics of Little Change
The only thing going for Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is his longevity in electoral politics Voter turnout in the first phase of Assam’s election on…
Assam Riddle: Who Will Be the Last Illegal Immigrant Standing?
Of the 5 million illegal immigrants in Assam, only 2,442 had been expelled between 1985 and 2012 The issue of citizenship in India has been…
Bloodstains in Assam: The Legacy of Nellie Communal Frenzy
The only blood that Sub Inspector Kabir Singh Limboo has seen spilled in the Nellie area has been in very bad road accidents on National…
Patriotism And Loyalty in A Time of Fear
In trust we God” was emblazoned on the back of a truck roaring past us on an Indian highway. In this topsy-turvier world, it is…
Keep The Flag Flying in This Hothouse
Every time Indians feel the hot and heavy breath of their government on their necks, they recoil. This is true of all governments going back…
The Wages of Nationalism, And the Imperatives of Power
Most of us ordinary mortals allow our buttons to be pressed by the cleverer people around us. Look first at the trajectory of the crisis…
Can Modi and Jaitley Balance Politics and Profligacy?
The world around us grows more uneasy by the day about the state of the global economy. China’s growth is slowing, oil and commodity prices…
Caste Iron: Will Narendra Modi Dare to Make India Equal?
Every few weeks, India heaves with episodic rage. Communal unrest, ghar wapsi, Hindutva, freedom of speech, beef, intolerance, and now the place of Dalits in…
It Has Been Pax Modiana all the Way Over Past 6 months
I don’t know how many people noticed this tweet from the Prime Minister’s Office on November 19: “External Affairs Minister@ Sushma Swaraj ji is present…
Instafame! Modi Zooms In and Out of Your View finder
What better setting to join Instagram than Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar’s new capital, back-dropped by visuals of spectacular pagodas, with thousands of swooning followers now…
The Incredible Lightness of Being a Wannabe Superpower
I should have titled this column “The Audacity of Hype”. Reading some of the speeches made at and around the Group of 20 summit in…
Terror at Our Doorstep & Other Dark Broodings
One of the more uncomfortable experiences I have had in reporting across the world was in March 2006 when I got a rare Pakistani visa…
The Sardar, the Pandit and the Loh Purush
The two men were born fourteen years and fourteen days apart. They died fourteen years apart, one just three years after independence. Vallabhbhai Patel and…
The Lights Go On in BJP’s Shop Window
Five years ago the Centennial Group and the Asian Development Bank issued an interesting report titled “India 2039: An Affluent Society”. There is a lot…
Riding A Moonbeam into A Year of Hope
Just over two weeks ago the world’s nations agreed they have averted cataclysmic global warming. Close on the heels of Chennai’s submersion, we have news…
Vendetta, Psychopathy, and Other Year-End Blues
“When the old mother received the body of her child, which the neighbours had brought back to her, she did not cry, but she stayed…
Climate Change in Delhi: The Limits of Modi’s Warming
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at his best when he is talking. He has been in office for 555 days and I wager that he…
Kalki Narendra Modi Flies on a Jat Plane
When our prime minister rode on horseback to the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu last week, one swooning supporter could not contain himself and tweeted:…
The Ghosts Modi and Nitish Carry on Their Backs
Eight hundred and forty-five years ago, Henry II of England, chafing under a long and abrading rivalry with Thomas Becket, his former friend and the…
Forget Bihar: Let’s Worry About our GNH
Forget Bihar: Let’s Worry About our GNH About 1,000 authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to…
Polls? Economy? Hygiene? No, It’s the Population!
I was chatting with my barber in Gurgaon when I realised that Narendra Modi and the hundreds of other politicians campaigning in the Haryana and…
Jago Swachhata Prerak! Modi Rides In From The West
Thousands of grumpy bureaucrats are being forced to sacrifice a long weekend—there are too many of them anyway this year in India—and clean toilets on…
A Few Small Incidents Happen While Bihar Votes…
“On an October evening, two young men met at a pawnshop.” So, starts ‘Hatyaare’ (Assassins), a disturbing and dystopian Hindi short story by Amarkant. It…
Totems, Idols and Symbols: The Modi Almanac
Twice in the past four months, Narendra Modi has spoken with unalloyed pride and excitement as he stood among our super-achieving space scientists at Sriharikota…
Narendra Modi Wanes a Little At Home & Waxes Abroad
Sometimes, when the late monsoon clouds hover low, India can be spied through the gloom, as if by happen-stance. So many geographies, languages, foods, cultures…
The Beef with The Indian Economy
Over the past week, I have been struck by the helplessness of the men leading the world’s two biggest democracies. There is a major difference,…
Modi in the US: Time for “Two Steps Forward
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” said Yogi Berra, the legendary catcher for the New York Yankees, who died on…
The Tweeting Yogi, And Other Tales From The Modi-nama
Narendra Modi is a follower of Yogi Adityanath. On Twitter, that is. But the Mahant from Gorakhpur has no qualms about setting a tone that…
Whose Line is PM Narendra Modi Toeing?
“The agenda focused on measures to correct the current account deficit, counter rupee depreciation and its impact on trade and industry improve skill development and…
One Hundred Days of Latitude
I marked one hundred days of the Narendra Modi government by meeting four women called Usha Chaumar, Guddi Athwal, Annu Tamole and Sunita Chawaria who…
Caste and Religion: Tough Tests, Steep Stakes
What can we be sure of as we head into the last four months of this year? Unless you live in one of those havens…
Modi’s Power: A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma
It is difficult to discern if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is beginning to lose his footing, or whether he is merely circling his wagons against…
How Much Coal Does a Crony Need?
Or how much telecom spectrum? Or iron ore? Or how many ports and airports? How many zeros must be added to a long string before…
Life and Death: Go Easy on the ‘Soma’
In his 2011 book ‘Target 3 billion’, AP J Abdul Kalam wrote about returning across the Rajasthan desert after India’s Pokhran nuclear tests in May…
Hindu Is As Hindu Does, But Does Modi?
It was a very Hindu week, starting with Raksha Bandhan and ending with Janmashthami, and midway through we were treated to fireworks by Yogi Adityanath,…
Lead Us From Ennui To Enlightenment
It is amusing, and not entirely surprising, that anybody sounding less than flattering of the Narendra Modi government is instantly suspected to be a member…
Will Modi Declare Independence From Poverty?
We are hopefully in the last of this summer’s dog days, and Sirius (or Svana as it is known in Hindu astrology) will glow a…
Is Modi Hoping Public Memory Will Stay Short?
Did Narendra Modi just experience his Sharm el-Sheikh moment? The joint India-Pakistan statement issued in the Russian city of Ufa last Friday, after Modi initiated…
Loaves and Fishes: Modi the ‘Sthitaprajna’
At times like this, with the air heavier; hotter and wetter than in a sauna, we Bhadravati’s long for the cool breeze of reason to…
Putting More Spine in Our Foreign Policy
This weekend Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Nepal on his third foreign trip in ten weeks. By the end of September he will…
‘How the Narendra Modi Government Came Through Its Baptism by Fire
When he won power 13 months ago, Narendra Modi promised he would reel out a governance thriller that was high on quality, aesthetics, story line,…
Team Modi Wobbles a Bit But Hasn’t Lost Its Balance
Change comes stealing in on padded feet in the Narendra Modi government, and change is starting to happen in the offices of his ministers. One…
Time Now for Modi to Take Pictures of a Credible India
Perhaps it is because every tremor registers as an earthquake on social media, but we seem besieged by one ‘not again’ moment after another. Whether…
Achhe Din, Ganga Din: Let’s Tune Down the Din
Somewhere, through the unbearable din of television and anti-social media this week, I saw one tweet that plaintively asked why we were hearing so much…
Not According to Plan
When a little girl named Topsy is asked in Uncle Tom’s Cabin if she knew who made her, she says, “I expect I grow’d.” Today,…
Reaping the Whirlwind in the 16th Lok Sabha
Our members of parliament sowed the wind in the 15th Lok Sabha and are reaping the whirlwind in the 16th Lok Sabha. The last Lok…
Sticks and Stones: Modi Should Make No Bone
Round about this time, we ought to have been chilling our champagne and getting ready to exult in, and celebrate, a year of dramatic and…
Modi Is Not Deng Xiaoping And He Will Never Be
To begin with, Modi is under microscopic watch and Deng never was. Modi has a good majority in the lower house of Parliament, but that…
Grasping the Nettle or Nettling the Graspers: Modi’s Ryot Ac
The Indian riot, or peasant cultivator, has always been a political football. When we think of a farmer most of us think, this man is…
Wanted: A Modi Road Show to Sell Reforms
One of my prized possessions is a fossilised limpet, a kind of sea snail that attach es itself very, very tightly to rocks. The fossil…
The Numbers Narendra Modi Needs to Stack Up
One year ago, as voting got underway in our national elections, I titled my first column in this newspaper A Witch’s Brew’. That referred to…
Power Plays: The Government Learns the Ropes
The Narendra Modi government has been taking a few hard knocks. It learned that sweet talk in Maharashtra’s sugar belt, or at a gaudy wedding…
Narendra Must Ask His Men to Heed his Namesake
Modi must turn to the speech made by his namesake and hero Narendra Nath Datta aka Swami Vivekananda, in Chicago. “I am proud to belong…
Hope, Hype and Heat: The Modi Baptism
There is a new sense of purposefulness in government. Many of the early steps Modi has taken reflect his Chief Executive Officer style in Gujarat.…
Da, Da, Da: Scripture for Our Modern Times
Damyata, datta, dayadhvam. “This very thing the heavenly voice of thunder repeats da, da, da, that is, control yourselves, give, be compassionate.” In the ancient…
Modi’s Task: TO Make India Less Effluent, More Affluent
The PMO website is taking on the busyness of Modi’s own website. Within hours of Munde’s death, the list of cabinet ministers was updated with…
#SelfishWithModi: Delhi’s Political Game of Thorns
Arvind Kejriwal is the India Rubber Man. A Leo in politics if there is one, charismatic, mercurial, impetuous and likeable despite his foibles, he has…
Kejri Redux, or Modi Resplendent? A Capital Tale of People Power
I felt a deep sadness as I listened to the hysteria over the suspicious donations that went into the Aam Aadmi Party’s coffers ten months…
Modi-lar Kitchen: Can He Cook Up a Great Government?
Modi went part-way towards BJP’s muscular defence strategy with the appointment of former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval as his National Security Advisor The Rajyabhishek…
Looking Into Our Teacups to Read the Pin Stripes
Long, long ago, before they invented news in 140 characters and we could remember our lives only through social media timelines, some of us believed…
The Meaning of Absolute Power
I was hard put on Wednesday to find an advertisement remembering Rajiv Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination. It was a telling contrast with…
POTUS Comes to Lotus Land in Search of a BAM Moment
Just as I sat down to write this column came news that those Indians who can afford them are going to be paying a lot…
Modi May Have to Don New Avatar to Take Along Allies, New & Old
One word summed up the five-week election: certitude. From the very beginning most of us were certain that the National Democratic Alliance would win power.…
Laughing Through Our Tears, or the Wages of Deadly Humour
On New Year’s Eve I attended the ‘The Book of Mormon’ at the Eugene O’Neill Theater on Broadway and as the rollicking, raunchy musical unfolded…
Thank You For Being a Part of the Fan Family
The end of campaigning in Amethi in a cacophony of anger, derogation, and obloquy was briefly leavened by “Twitter joining Rajinikanth.” The Superstar’s followers piled…
Mayday! We Need a Hundred Million Jobs!
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.- Julius Caesar, Act 1 By Wednesday elections had been…
Who’s Afraid of Modi?
Certainly not the growing number of people who believe that “free speech” means a loose mouth and the abuse of certain classes or communities. Imran…
The Science of Daydreaming, or How We Forgot How to Fly
“There are two kinds of people Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek.” Gus Portokalos in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ I couldn’t…
Poll Point: Who are We Voting for Anyway?
Several moons ago a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the…
Multi-democracy Parties: Modi, Lee and Impermanence of Power
This column will be published exactly ten months after Narendra Modi took office in the South Block. It is as good a time as any…
Nota Bene: Indian Voter Can Turn Any Analysis on its Head
Aam Aadmi Party Eyes Clean Sweep in National Capital The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is expecting to win all seven Lok Sabha seats, according to…
A Witch’s Brew
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the middle ages. You were dunked in water as a…
‘Me Tarzan, You All Janes’: The Alpha Indian Roars Again
More than once in the past couple of weeks, before he climbed into his plane to fly off to more island nations, Narendra Modi was…
Let Us Govern Ourselves , For a Change
We Indians do have too much government in our lives. The ‘less government’ part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s edge ought to have translated, by…
Resolutions 2015 for the Bharatiya Janata & the BJP
In the late 15th century, an anonymous playwright wrote Everyman, widely billed as the world’s greatest morality play of all time, in which the gentle…
Taxiing Towards a Karmic Take-off
The prime minister, fresh from his own memories as a state leader, appears to be trying to forge a consensus (on GST and other Reforms).…
Arrested development or attention deficit?
The good news is that everybody – the International Monetary Fund was the latest to fall in line on Tuesday – agrees with the Reserve…
Bhopal gas leak container unearthed
Bhopal (Reuter) -Investigators probing the world’s worst industrial disaster have uncovered the steel tank from which poisonous gas leaked last December, killing 2.500 people, police…
Minister quits due to his foreign visit
Dhaka, Aug. 11: Bangladesh’s state minister for local government and rural development Syed Abul Hossain has resigned after he used a second passport on a…
Rich Indians in Southall are homesick
Southall (London), Aug. 11: The sign outside the local primary school sternly warns against parking in front of the gates in English, Hindi, Punjabi and…
American rush to adopt Chinese babies
Hong Kong: A growing number of Americans are paying $3,000 to adopt Chinese orphan baby girls, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Sunday. The Sunday…
‘Panic on all sides’ in golden jubilee year of formation
Islamabad, Aug.10: Pakistan marks its golden jubilee this week with its frayed democratic institutions under pressure from ethnic and religious violence, economic strains and a…
U.S. Bill to Block Petrol Shipments
WASHINGTON, July 21. The House of Representatives’ Merchant Marine Committee today approved a Bill to block petroleum shipments to any foreign country unless the Secretary…
Chinese Cabinet Changes Likely
SHANGHAI, July 22. Rumours of impending changes in the Executive Yuan (Chinese Cabinet) were current in political and commercial circles here as Nationalist China prepared…
Life Sentence for Jap General
NANKING, July 22 .Lieut-Gen Ressuke Isagai, 65-year-old Governor of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Chinese war crimes…
Britain’s Sympathy For Burma
LONDON, July 92—U Tin Tut, Burma’s Minister without portfolio and High Commissioner-Designate to Britain, and U Ko Gyi, Vice-President of the Burma Socialist Party, on…
U.S. Message To Thakin NU
WASHINGTON, July 21. The U.S. State Department tonight released the text of a message from the Consul in Rangoon, Mr Packard, to the Counsellor of…
SUIYUAN GOVERNOR’S DENIAL
SHANGHAI July 21. Gen Fu Tso Yi, Governor of Suiyuan, the Chinese province bordering Outer Mongolia, who is visiting Nanking, today denied reports that Outer…
BRAZIL’S WITHDRAWAL FROM FOOD COUNCIL
LONDON, July 21. The distribution of rice in Malaya and other Far Eastern countries would be affected by the withdrawal of Brazil from the International…
Masood ready for talks with Taliban
Mazar-e-Sharif, Aug. 11: The leader of Afghan Opposition forces besieging Kabul said on Monday he was ready for peace talks anytime and anywhere, except in…
Ross brings Arafat, Israeli negotiators together
‘Parties agree to resume trilateral meetings’ Jerusalem, Aug. 11: US envoy Dennis Ross has brought about the first meeting between Israeli officials and Palestinian leader…
Thousands in Gaza march for Palestinian prisoners
Gaza, Aug. 11: Thousands of Palestinian protesters marched on Gaza’s main street on Monday demanding Israel free their prisoners and end a closure it posed…
DUTCH EXPLAIN ACTION
THE HAGUE, July 22. The Dutch Government, in a statement handed to Dr Pelt, acting General Secretary of the United Nations, explaining why “police measures”…
‘Flash Urgent. Gandhi shot 4 times. Point blank. Worst feared’
I did not expect much. copy from | Mahatma Gandhi’s prayer meeting on January 30, 1948. Two recent 3 events were on my mind, though:…
How Srinagar stayed tranquil as war came to Kashmir
Reuters correspondent Doon Campbell, who arrived in India in March 1947 and spent the next 15 months covering the independence of India and birth of…
Mr. Jinnah Feted on Arrival in Karachi
KARACHI, Aug 7. —More than 50,000 people, who in their enthusiasm broke several rings of police cordons, thronged Mauripur airport this evening to welcome the…
Tricolour to be India’s National Flag
NEW DELHI, Tuesday. —There were scenes of enthusiasm in the Constituent Assembly today when Pandit Nehru in a stirring speech commended to the House for…
Asia Online Leads the Way
Websites and portals across Asia are latching on to a new Reuters editorial product put together in a new way. It’s barely seven months old…
Debonair: Poems
IF IT’S THE ONLY WAY OUT Feel the need to shout. Hurl your hurt at me; Let anger tinkle in sparkling shards If it must …
Benegal And Karnad: Speaking The Language Of The Masses
Shyam Benegal grew up in the shadow of the Charminar at Hyderabad. Perhaps that childhood gave him two important outlooks the first of the quintessentially…
“PIL is not an indictment of the failure of the system”
HLM (Halsbury’s Law Monthly): There are strong feelings both for and against public interest litigation, and a suspicion that maybe it is quite often abused.…
Justice P. N. Bhagwati: “People are losing faith in arbitration”
Former Chief Justice of India, Justice PN Bhagwati, underlines the shortcomings in the arbitration system in India, in a discussion with Publishing Director Chaitanya Kalbag.…
The Abridgement of Individual Liberty
(Chaitanya Kalbag has been a journalist, editor and manager for over 33 years. In his most recent assignment as Editor in Chief of Hindustan Times,…
Near total enrollment, improved infra; So what’s the problem with our education system?
The Puranas say it took the gods and demons a thousand years, with some help from Vishnu who took on the form of a tortoise,…
Unique question: Will we have a life after Aadhaar?
If you are of a certain age, and not one of the millennial Indians who will turn 18 this year and be eligible to vote,…
Everything is hunky-dory, don’t you agree?
The prime minister’s speech at the World Economic Forum was sweeping and aspirational (one observer said he was “preaching to the choir”). He presented India…
How PM Modi has run UPA’s legacy programmes better than his predecessors
They say the best way to persuade somebody is to plant an idea in their head and get them to start speaking about it as…
It’s magical mystery tour: This government’s been raising expectations, not the economy
The government’s ‘Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikas’ (Clean Intent, Right Development) campaign is expectation management in an election year. Nineteen months after demonetisation, we still do…
The IAF is the loser in the war over Rafale
Nobody with even a rudimentary interest in national security will dispute that the Indian Air Force (IAF) needs more firepower. Currently, it has 600 combat…
Better healthcare makes economic sense. Does it make political sense?
Next week, when PM Narendra Modi makes his fifth Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, he might want to remind us that in 2022,…
#MeToo: Impunity and immunity of sexual predators must end at media workplaces
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is…
Will India ever learn to speak loudly? The signs, so far, are dismal
Earlier this month the United Nations issued its first set of ‘diya’ postage stamps to mark Diwali and the triumph of good over evil. It…
Be careful what you digest from the results of the assembly elections
I like only one kind of fudge and one kind of shake, the chocolate kind. And I especially dislike fudges and shakes of the economic…
The government is performing a risky high-wire balancing act
Let me put it simply: the government is performing two balancing acts simultaneously. In order to get to this perilous position, it has time and…
Chalte Raho Pyare Fauji
Chalte Raho Pyare Fauj. That is what the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is fondly called in police parlance. Cynics would call them cannon fodder.…
India has crossed just one battle line, but many more lie ahead
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. More precisely, it grows from the air-to-air missiles mounted on an upgraded but ageing MiG…
Can India fashion a policy to weather the existential crisis it faces?
Greta Thunberg’s emotional speech at the UN Climate Action Summit on Sept.23 was followed by Donald Trump’s mocking tweet: “She seems like a very happy…
A $5 trillion economy is a stretch; do we have the running legs?
In 2018, India’s per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) was $2015.60, according to the World Bank. This makes sense – our economy is currently sized at…
Does this festive season herald fireworks or damp squibs?
It is amazing how things come around. I was listening to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Houston speech. After speaking in several Indian languages, Modi said:…
EC needs more rope to get to the bottom of campaign spending
Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled Rs 20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced.…
Manmohan gets Gandhigiri
PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh placed his seal of approval on Sunday on Lage Raho Munnabhai. In South Africa on a three-day trip long on history…
Gandhi Peace Prize for Desmond Tutu
ARCHBISHOP DESMOND Tutu has been awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2005 in recognition of his “invaluable contribution towards social and political transformation through dialogue…
PM asks Pakistan to walk the talk on terror
Islamabad’s response to request for cooperation on Mumbai blasts will test the commitment given in Havana PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh said on Tuesday that Pakistan…
PM traces the Mahatma’s historic steps
Durban, September 30 PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh touched down in balmy weather in Durban on Saturday on his first visit to South Africa to honour…
Winning the vote of over-confidence
It says a lot about Narendra Modi’s absence of apprehension over Friday’s no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha that the same day the foreign ministry…
Will Ayushman Bharat do better than its predecessor schemes?
Sometime over the next few weeks — most likely in his Independence Day speech — Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch what has already…
Rahul’s ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ jibe has stuck in BJP’s craw, and it may launch an all-out populist assault.
I like only one kind of fudge and one kind of shake, the chocolate kind. And I especially dislike fudges and shakes of the economic…
ASSAM – The Nellie Nightmare
Blood will have blood.. -Macheth, William Shakespeare ON THAT fateful Friday, the thought of death hovered over Nellie and the surrounding villages like a vulture.…
Bhagalpur – Blinkers on Barbarity
PUBLIC memory is all too amnesic., and the Bhagalpur blinding’s which sickened and shocked the nation when they were exposed in November 1980 have almost…
FAMILY PLANNING – Injection Of Hope
FAMILY planning in India has always been dogged by a debilitating combination of moral, sociological, superstitious and even political complexes. Post-1977, however, while the nation’s…
SURYA – Sun Changes its Spots
MEDIA NOT since Brutus has there been such a stab in such a back. No wonder Indira Gandhi was so “absolutely livid” and her daughter-in-law…
BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY – Gilding An Image
ALL GOOD Hindus hope to reincarnate as better Hindus, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be celebrating its second birthday on April 5 with…
SIBERIAN CRANE – Struggle For Survival
FOR CENTURIES, cranes have been held up as auspicious birds in many countries, serving as symbols of long life and happiness. Ironically, however, the graceful…
IMF Chief Sets New Forecasts
HELSINKI The International Monetary Fund forecast Wednesday that Japan would slip into recession this year, the European economy would grow by well below 2 percent,…
Taleban’s Top Afghan Foe Reported Dead of Wounds
ISLAMABAD The chief military op ponent of the Taleban in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massoud, died Friday of wounds suffered in a suicide bomb attack last…
2 Groups Seek Collor’s Ouster
BRASILIA – Brazil’s Bar Association and Press Association formally asked the Congress on Tuesday to impeach President Fernando Collor de Mello for failing to uphold…
Microsoft Reiterates Call to Supreme Court to Reverse Ruling
WASHINGTON – Microsoft Corp. reiterated its call for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling that the company violated U.S. antitrust laws,…
Ukraine Chief Plays Down Magnitude of Black Sea Crash
KIEV Ukraine inched closer on Wednesday to conceding that one of its missiles might have blown up a Russian airliner, but President Leonid Kuchma stepped…
Protests Erupt in Pakistan, With One slain and 7 wounded in west
AMERICA STRIKES BACK / Worldwide Reverberations Reuters QUETTA, Pakistan the Pakistani U.S. demonstrators who brandished pictures of Osama bin Laden and burned cars and a…
A Nobel for Cancer Researchers
Prize Honors Discoveries on What Can Go Wrong in Cell Division Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches STOCKHOLM Three researchers whose discoveries of molecular elements…
Ukraine Still Denying Missile Downed Airliner Angry Relatives Visit Black Sea Crash Site
Angry Relatives Visit Black Sea Crash Site Reuters KIEV Ukraine’s military on Monday clung to its denial that a rogue missile blew up a Russian…
Farmers can face the world
THEY CALL economies a dismal science, but it need not be so when Dr Jagdish Bhagwati discusses it. The Columbia professor, who has long been…
Trapped with no way out
PEOPLE trapped in the burning North Tower of the World Trade Center scramble to the windows in terror to escape the fire. Shortly after this…
Osama is top suspect
Experts say few other terrorist organisations would be capable of mounting such a large-scale attack ISLAMABAD The United States may have many enemies in the…
Official media trains guns on ‘small group’ of plotters
CHINA’S official media yesterday attacked a “small group” they accused of plotting to overthrow communist rule and said the group had help from the highest…
US stock exchanges close down
Following the attacks, trading was shut down across the US and are not likely to resume for at least several days NEW YORK The US…
Attacks contrary to our faith: Muslim leader
CAIRO -The top authority for the world’s Sunni Muslims, the imam of Al Azhar, yesterday condemned the wave of deadly terrorist attacks in the US…
Gandhi Still Faces Obstacles
To Peace Despite Punjab Triumph By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI (Reuter)—Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s peace pact to end three years of sectarian turmoil in…
Reuter Confidential – Restricted Circulation
Our file from Frankfurt and Bonn on the resignation of Bundesbank President Poch! was excellent throughout in timings, newsbreaks and analysis, Our copy from New…
Rajiv’s political skill goes on trial
By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI (Reuter): India’s new Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, yet to win his spurs in government, must quickly take a series of…
Leader’s slaying could trigger worst crisis since India gained independence
By CHAITANYA KALBAG Reuters News Service NEW DELHI, India Indira Gandhi’s assassination Wednesday threatened to plunge India into the worst crisis in its 37 years…
Hindu-Sikh feud bewilders expert
FOR the grey-bearded Sikh sitting in a cosy academic study India’s Punjab crisis is no longer a series of grim newspaper head- lines. Last week…
People trickling back to Bhopal
By CHAITANYA KALBAG Bhopal, Dec 18. Some of the 250.000 people who fled the central Indian city of Bhopal fearing a fresh leak of poison…
Congress is fighting for survival
By CHAITANYA KALBAG New Delhi, Dec 11. India’s ruling Congress (I) Party, which celebrates its centenary next year, is fighting for political survival as much…
Gandhi denies blaming the CIA
New Delhi: The Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, yesterday denied local press reports that she had accused a US espionage agency of fomenting Sikh secessionist activity. …
Rajiv’s hands freed to improve relation
Uneasy ties with neighbours By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI, (Reuter): Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s massive victory in the Indian general election has given him new…
Rajiv has to make crucial decisions
Bitter squabbles divide party By CHAITANYA KALBAG New Delhi, Nov 4. India’s new Prime Minister. Mr. Rajiy Gandhi, yet to win his spurs in Government,…
Bhutan’s bachelor king
By CHAITANYA KALBAG, of Reuter, in Thimbu Tucked away in the eastern Himalayas lives the ruler of a fairyland little kingdom who must be one…
Bhutan wants to be last of the Shangrilas
THIMPHU, Bhutan. “Do not give pens, sweets or medicine to villagers,” warns a Bhutanese government guidebook for tourists and mountaineers. For a country described in…
Bhutan develops with an eye to spiritual heritage
By CHAITANYA KALBAG of Reuters through NZPA Thimphu, Bhutan on many mountainsides in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, Buddhist prayer wheels powered by streams…
China crackdown on disc pirate
Reuter BEIJING-The government said Monday that it will begin a crackdown on compact disc piracy during the Chinese New Year festival that kicks off…
Pyongyang raps reactor reports
Reuter HONG KONG-North Ko rea said Monday that any plan to supply it with South Kore an-style reactors could Jeop ardoise its nuclear deal with…
South Korean parties bickering
Both the ruling party and the main opposition party are embroiled in leadership disputes that could lead to party splits. Reuter SEOUL-South Korea’s main opposition…
Taiwan 7-11 chain seeks listing
Reuter TAIPEI-Taiwan’s 7-Eleven chain store, friend to late-night shoppers and darling of foreign investors, is seeking to transfer its winning ways to a potentially huge…
China upbraids U.S. to Kissinger
Reuter BEIJING-Chinese President Jiang Zemin used Monday’s visit by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to rebuke Washington for interfering in internal Chinese affairs…
Life after Di: Can Camilla be queen?
Reuter LONDON-It must be one of the biggest regrets of Prince Charles’ life. He lost his chance for happiness with one woman, married the wrong…
In antiquity, the polished marble Games came with rough edges
ATHENS In the good old days of the ancient Games, Olympia was the honorable playground of noble athletes, a theater of sacred peace, fair play…
Vice President Is Moved Out of Washington
Reuters WASHINGTON – As the Secret Service widened its security perimeter around the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney was moved to the Camp David…
France’s Economic Growth Slows
Sluggish GDP Adds to Euro-Zone Gloom,But German Exports Rise Reuters The French economy expanded in the second quarter at its weakest pace in two and…
Bid for German Bank Sunk by Market Slide
Reuters FRANKFURT – Talks on a takeover of Germany’s Reuters Commerzbank AG by UniCredito Italiano SpA fell apart Tuesday because of differences over valuation after…
Bin Laden: America Will Not Live in Peace’
Reuters Following is a transcript of a videotaped statement by Osama bin Laden broadcast Sunday on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television: Here is America struck by…
Gorbachev Urges Talks Follow-Up
Reuters SOUSTONS, France Presi dent Mikhail S. Gorbachev said on Thursday that the Madrid peace conference had broken the ice between Middle East foes but…
Berlin Bars Downing Airliners
BERLIN – Germany has ruled out the possibility of shooting down hijacked passenger planes even if they appeared to threaten buildings with suicide attacks, the…
‘Our Land’ Can’t Be Traded, Shamir Says
Reuters NEW YORK – Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir pleaded for American understanding in the hours before the Middle East peace conference opened, asking where Israelis…
Lenin Statue Is Losing Berlin Battle
BERLIN (Reuters) – Protected by the police and armed with a new court order, workers on Friday resumed the dismantling of Berlin’s giant Lenin statue,…
Walesa Chooses a Prime Minister
WARSAW (Reuters) – President Lech Walesa of Poland will ask Bronislaw Geremek, a former Solidarity adviser and a leader of the Democratic Union party, to…
Shakespeare Folio for Sale
Reuters LONDON – A rare edition of the first printed works of William Shakespeare made a brief appearance at the Globe Theatre here ahead of…
Israeli Tanks Strike in Jenin, An Alleged Terrorist Nest
Abdul Salam Zaeef, Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, on Wednesday. About 20 people, mostly Pakistanis, were killed in the U.S. attack. An Italian employee of the…
South Korean Ship Dumps Dead Chinese
Reuters SEOUL – The crew of a South Korean ship is facing arrest for dumping the bodies of 25 Chinese illegal immigrants into the sea…
Yugoslav Navy Lets Aid Flotilla Enter Dubrovnik
Reuters DUBROVNIK, Yugoslavia – The Yugoslav Navy on Wednesday searched a flotilla of Croatian relief boats for weapons before allowing it to pass through a…
For the Record
Britain’s longest-serving member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell of the Labour Party, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday that he would unleash the most serious…
UN Lifts Arms Ban On Yugoslavia
UNITED NATIONS, New York – The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to lift a three- year-old Yugoslavia, ending the last in a arms embargo…
Germany Warned About Nationalism
BERLIN – A senior figure in Germany’s Jewish community has attacked a proposal by a leading Christian Democrat to make national identity an election campaign…
Germany Now Stresses Cooperation On Cheaper European Fighter Plane
BONN (Reuters) Germany, in a subtle conciliatory shift, said Monday it was striving to develop a cheaper version of the European Fighter Aircraft in agreement…
Liberian Assailed Over Nuns’ Deaths
MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) – Liberia’s Roman Catholic primate said at a requiem Mass on Monday for five American nuns that he held the rebel leader…
Boeing Offers Reasons for Mishap
SEATTLE (Reuters)-A Boeing Co. spokesman said Monday that the engine lost from a 747 cargo plane on its approach to Luxembourg airport had apparently fallen…
Record Damages Awarded in China AIDS Case
Reuters BEIJING – A Chinese court has awarded the family of a woman who died from AIDS a record $1.2 million after she was infected…
New Delhi Rioters Bring Devastation
Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches NEW DELHI Hindu and Muslim rioters burned and vandalized mosques, temples, homes and shops Friday in some of the…
On West Bank, Olive Branches and High Hopes
RAMALLAH, Israeli-Occupied West Bank-Palestinians poured into the streets after their chief delegate’s speech at the Madrid peace talks on Thursday, decorating Israeli army jeeps with…
Cuba Cuts Production and Wages
HAVANA (Reuters) – The Labor Ministry has ordered managers at many companies to cut back production schedules, resulting in wage cuts of up to 30…
European Traffic Chiefs See Increase
PRAGUE (Reuters) – Traffic could increase by 1,000 percent on some European east-west routes in the next decade with the fall of communism in Eastern…
4 Imprisoned for Theft of Van Goghs
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A court on Thursday jailed four men for their role in the biggest art theft since World War II, Dutch radio said.…
Taleban Air Offensive Reported Near Kabul
Fighting Follows Attack on Opposition Chief Renters KABUL – The Taleban has begun a major offensive north of the capital after suicide bombers tried to…
Oregon Gas Utility To Buy Enron Un For $1.8 Billion
NEW YORK – Northwest Natural Gas Co, said Monday it would buy Enron Corp.’s Portland General Electric unit for $1.8 billion in a deal that…
Bhopal victims try to rebuild lives
by Chaitanya Kalbag Reuter, in Bhopal HUNDREDS of people stand outside the drab white bungalow, clutching yellow X-ray folders and medical prescriptions in a line…
U.S. Envoy to Jordan Injured in Auto Crash
JERUSALEM – Roger G. Harrison, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan, was injured Monday is an automobile collision on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, the Israeli police…
American Is Killed by Car Bomb In Turkey
ANKARA-Car bombs killed an American serviceman and seriously injured an Egyptian diplomat here Monday in attacks directed at the Middle East peace conference. A group…
Chaitanya Kalbag is HT editor-in-chief
CHAITANYA KALBAG takes over as Editor-in-Chief of all editions of the Hindustan Times today. Kalbag brings with him extensive global experience in journalism. His last…
Deficit sets alarm bells ringing
The government’s fiscal profligacy has made a mockery of the FRBM Act. {Play} Pranab Mukherjee sounded pleased earlier this week when he told a TV…
How to apologies without saying sorry
Apologising is never easy. Barack Obama knows this now. He made a non-apology apology last week to a Massachusetts police sergeant two days after saying…
Is India a miracle economy? Or is it just smoke and mirrors
“Curiouser and curiouser” sums up India’s economy. There is little or no credit, tepid business and consumer confidence, exports are struggling, and yet gross domestic…
Post K’taka, Will Modi Push for Simultaneous Elections?
In 2012, watching Manmohan Singh struggling with a disorderly coalition, an obstreperous cabinet, and a host of powerful state chief ministers, I wrote that he…
Karnataka Economy To Stay Robust Whether Led by BJP or Cong-JD(S)
One of the smartest things Prime Minister Narendra Modi did after coming to power four years ago was to appoint diehard loyalists as state governors.…
‘One Nation, One Election’: What’s In It For the Modi Government?
The momentum towards holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies is growing, but can this be achieved in one fell swoop? If…
When the Centre Cannot Hold
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere The ceremony of innocence…
The Sexual Fears of Men
Perhaps Kinsey would have an exhilarating time if he were to conduct a survey among young Indian men on their sexual fears and phobias. We…
Bhutan opens slowly to the World
The writer has ventured to the secretive Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where less than 2,000 visitors are permitted to visit each year, to report on…
THE CONFESSIONS OF AN INDIAN WOMAN-HATER
Vrata is one of those typical Indians who have followed in Nirad Chaudhuri’s footsteps: the man who lives off dishwashing in some seedy Gulf restaurant…
Fortnightly Take off on Bestsellers : TRAIN TO UZBEKHISTAN
A short, spicy travelogue-cum-novel, “Train To Uzbekhistan’ is replete with descriptions of the locomotive that hauls the assortion of bogies, one of which holds Dukhwant…
Believe Ripley or Not
Christmas Day, 1893. The place : Santa Rosa, California. The event : the birth of Robert Leroy Ripley, soon to be known as Rip the…
Fortnightly Take- off on Bestsellers : Hovel
HOVEL is another masterpiece in analytical fiction by Bailey, whose previous successes included Hangar Zero Nine and Tyres. The book measures 11 cms by 18…
Dr. Jung & Zeenat Aman
I’ve been seeing too many Hindi movies. Talk about the bus system, or the weather, or your television set, and I prefer to opt out.…
THE BUNS OF CAMERONE
THE BUNS OF CAMERONE is MacFat’s sixth book. The dust-jacket says it’s a thriller in the true Fleming Le Carre tradition. I would prefer to…
One Modern Indian Intellectual
Indians love being malapropistic . When they talk of intellectuals, they mean ‘intelligentsia’. Lawyers, doctors, and income-tax consultants are therefore wrongly, and frequently, tossed headlong…
SLAVERY AT NOON
Our fourth bestseller take-off this fortnight is the controversial ‘Freedom at Midnight’, a book that sold the maximum hardcover editions in India in the past…
TEEVEE Madness
Gone are the days of traffic jams on Thursday evenings when everyone rushed home to see Chhaya Geet. Gone also are the days when Kamleshwar…
Satya Sai baba : Take it or Leave it
ONE evening twenty years ago in Puttaparti, a village in Andhra Pradesh, a 60 year old man lay close to death. As his wife and…
Iran: Towards Islamic Medievalism?
WHO would believe that I should work 10 hours a day for 37 years to help my country only to see it go back to…
MANIPUR: A State Of Siege
AT first sight, Imphal is cloaked in quietude. It looks more like a small town than the capital of Manipur – its population is less…
Is China Helping The Rebels?
“War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states or among political…
LIFE IN IRAN : Joyless and Hopeless
Close to one-sixth of Iran’s population of 38 million lives in Teheran, the sprawling capital that slides southward from the cold slopes of an Elborz…
Gathering Storm in Tamil Nadu
THE violence and the passions that have unleashed a caste war in Gujarat have found sympathetic onlookers in Tamil Nadu. These onlookers may not remain…
Assam: Why the Minority Govt Continues
IN Assam, a Chief Minister who is unpopular in her own party is being kept on, a minority government is being propped up, and the…
INSIDE KHOMEINI’S IRAN : Heading for an Anti-Mullah Revolt?
The most intense patriotism usually flourishes in the rear lines,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago about Russia at war with Nazi Germany. Not…
PUTTING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER
The ‘poverty line’ is assumed to be consumption of Rs 65 per capita per month in rural areas and Rs 75 in urban areas at…
CARNAGE IN TRIPURA : Tribals Fight Bengali Domination
THE first spark flew on 6 June. A Bengali shopkeeper at Lembucchara, 8 km from Agartala, lent a tribal friend of his a dao (sickle)…
Rajiv and the Rally: No doubt about it, it was his show
Did Rajiv Gandhi bring off the Kisan Rally? Perhaps not single-handedly, but there is little doubt that the Rally was his brain-child. The Rally itself…
KISAN RALLY : Was This Costly Tamasha Necessary?
Never had so many people gained so little from so heralded an event as the Kisan Rally in Delhi on 16 February. Estimates of the…
The Quality Of Justice
Poorly paid, snowed under by a huge backlog of pending cases, buffeted by the government’s attempts to manipulate judicial processes and appointments, our judiciary has…
LETTER FROM NEW DELHI
Beginning with this issue, New Delhi becomes an Asian newsmagazine. Thirty-nine of the 211 nations in the world are located in Asia. In land area,…
LETTER FROM NEW DELHI
Very little authentic reportage has emerged from Iran since the nation’s Shia clergy led a mass revolt against the Shah in early 1979. Strategically and…
LETTER FROM NEW DELHI
The ten-week-old agitation against reservations in Gujarat which has so far claimed 30 lives, is the second most serious agitation of its kind in the…
The Dead Still Haunt Chasnalla!
THE road to Chasnalla is not an easily forgettable experience. The geography is that of an overcrowded, dirty and noisy coal mining area. Badly pitted…
Some Chasnalla Case Histories
Rehabilitating the Chasnalla victims families has proved to be an on-going task. The Indian Iron and Steel Company’s welfare officers at Chasnalla wear a perpetually…
The Accident & Its Aftermath
Chasnall was unique, said a civil servant ‘in Patna. “The government moved very fast in rehabilitating the victims’ families. There were few delays, little red…
Cinema Boom in South India: How Madras became India’s film Capital
THE next time you are talking about Indian films, don’t let your tongue slip into saying “the Bombay film industry” No longer is Bombay India’s…
Youth Politics -The Same Old Game
What is the current state of youth politics ? Every youth organisation is dominated by the parent party and suffers from the prejudices of old…
Belchhi and Pipra Revisited
SIX kilometres from Harnaut, the jeep broke down in the mud. The slipper-shod lady decided to continue her journey on elephant-back. Perched dangerously behind her…
The North East: India’s Bangladesh
ON the outskirts of Gauhati city stands the gleaming Sarai-ghat Bridge across the Brahmaputra. It was at Saraighat that the legendary general of the Ahoms,…
ASSAM: Over The Edge
INTRACTABLE and increasingly aggressive, the Assam agitation last fortnight edged closer to ugly confrontation. The deadline for a Central government decision on the foreigners issue…
Western Court
WESTERN Court, an official hostelry in the heart of New Delhi, epitomises the decay of our poli- tical .system. It has become a classic symbol…
Paper Tigers
IT could have been a coincidence, but on |18 October Dr Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri, ex-vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, was in Geneva; Dr Vidya…
Curryfinger
A THRILLER is the sort of book that you take to bed with you and then read on through the night, impatient that the pages…
A dangerous line was crossed when Door Darshan telecast Bhagwat’s speech live
A line was crossed this Dussehra when Door Darshan broadcast the Vijaya Dashami speech by Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat, the Sarsanghachalak of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh…
What the assembly poll results are about, apart from the continued rise of Narendra Modi
Oh, what a glorious thing democracy is! If you add the number of festivals, weekends, hours spent in bad traffic, and election days in a…
Punjabi Novel in English : ‘Like they so in film’
IT is difficult to judge Indian writing in English, saturated as it often is with the smells, sights and sounds of the ethos it springs…
Re-Introducing Ourselves
JUST as a man casts off his old clothes only to wear new ones, says the Bhag vadgita, so does a man die only to…
What the Sunday verdicts in Maharashtra and Haryana will mean for Narendra Modi
“Our nation’s biggest problem is that we who sit in government think nobody knows more than us, nobody is more honest than us, and nobody…
After biting the dust of the Gangetic plains, Modi needs to come home and stay home
For prime minister Narendra Modi, 2015 has been an annus horribilis, bravely by the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) waiting loss in the Delhi elections in…
33 years after a blood-soaked vote, Assam still holds its breath during poll season
WHO would believe that I should work 10 hours a day for 37 years to help my country only to see it go back to…
Biren De “I don’t care about art critics”
I’M a very well known painter. I don’t care for those stultified art critics. It’s you ‘unknow- ledgeables’ – who can reach out on our…
Modi intensifies push against open defecation
High stakes gamble to change behavior NEW DELHI — Of all Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaigns, none, perhaps, is more consequential than the…
Key Indian adviser sees bumpy economic path
Arvind Subramanian weighs impact of demonetization, GST and Air India sell-off NEW DELHI — Political stability in India paved the way for root-and-branch reforms such…
India must paint itself out of its economic corner
Will Modi carry out fundamental reforms or continue to tinker? NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement Monday of a $2.5 billion program…
India’s Modi at three years earns mixed scorecard
Despite apparent success, trouble spots range from growing corporate debt to sluggish job creation Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to people as he leaves…
Will Modi put his money where his mouth is?
Populist promises helped BJP’s poll success, but reforms could be costly Key state Uttar Pradesh is a political lynchpin: it sends the maximum number of…
For India, the sky is not the limit
Startup reaches for the moon in global competition NEW DELHI — Just after Christmas this year, the spindly Team Indus Spacecraft, weighing 210 kg, will…
TIGHTROPE ACT
India’s Modi seeks to balance populism and fiscal prudence as risks mount Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi likes taking big steps and does not shy…
Jaitley keeps a steady hand on India’s economic tiller
No ‘big bang’ reforms but budget tries to be all things to all people Speaking after the budget was tabled in parliament, Modi said it…
India’s central bank chief made too many enemies (2)
Separately, an Asset Quality Review ordered by Rajan to attack crisis levels of bad loans made by state-owned banks and an accompanying crackdown on ‘willful…
India’s central bank chief made too many enemies
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan at an event on financial inclusion in Mumbai in April…
Has Urjit Patel moved India’s inflation goalposts? (2)
In its Oct. 4 report, the RBI appeared to highlight the upside risk of inflation. It said that its September survey of household expectations saw…
Has Urjit Patel moved India’s inflation goalposts?
The Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel speaks during a news conference after the bi-monthly monetary policy review in Mumbai on Oct. 4. ©…
India struggles to find its feet after demonetization (2)
Will demonetization vacuum up all the black money? Economists believe most illicit, untaxed funds would be diverted into buying gold or real estate; indeed, gold…
India struggles to find its feet after demonetization
Every Indian banknote carries two reassuring messages: “Guaranteed by the central government,” and above the signature of the governor of the Reserve Bank of India,…
Modi’s third year in power could be his best yet (2)
About 1,200 companies have so far declared full-year results for 2015-16, averaging top-line growth of 3.7% in the quarter through March after an 8% decline…
Modi’s third year in power could be his best yet
The past few weeks in India have been like drinking from a fire hose. Full-page newspaper advertisements, huge rallies and hosannas from giddy supporters have…
India pays the price of demonetization (2)
Modi’s war on black money has hit India’s economy. Is the price worth paying? Modi’s Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Dec. 8 announced a raft…
India pays the price of demonetization
Modi’s war on black money has hit India’s economy. Is the price worth paying? A man holds placards and shouts slogans during a rally…
RBI’s Patel: an insider, a hawk, an enigma (2)
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor Urjit Patel, right, who has been named the next RBI governor, attends a news conference with Governor Raghuram…
RBI’s Patel: an insider, a hawk, an enigma
Indeed, a committee headed by Patel himself in January 2014 made three far-reaching recommendations that seem certain to haunt him. First, it suggested a shift…
Rajan hits back at critics as he leaves India’s central bank 2
CHAITANYA KALBAG, contributing writer NEW DELHI — Although his three-year term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India was one of the shortest in…
Rajan hits back at critics as he leaves India’s central bank
CHAITANYA KALBAG, contributing writer “That is a hard standard for anybody’s commentary to meet, especially if you have a press which is continuously looking for…
WHEN WILL WE STRIKE GOLD?
1976 promises to be a year to remember: with five Sundays in February, America’s Bicentennial, and the Olympics in Montreal. Right now, July’s looming up…
Are our new music directors any good?
YOU’RE a member of the Hindi film audience. You see most of the films in town. You listen to the songs regularly on the radio,…
Fight For Democracy
AUTHORITARIANISM may have professedly ended with the Emergency, but it continues to afflict many walks of our life. It has raised its ugly head, from…
English is a dying language here
FOURTEEN years younger than VS Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul was born in 1945 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and was educated in Trinidad and Oxford. He began writing…
PARTING HOTS
As he leaves India’s central bank, Rajan takes aim at his critics and points out the challenges awaiting his successor NEW DELHI Although his three-year…
Modi has one job: Get India’s lazy tiger of an economy to roar
Modi has one job: Get India’s lazy tiger of an economy to roar Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley will have two tough acts to follow…
Here are Assam’s political suitors as the state goes to poll today
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it is a make-or-break election in Assam. Of the four states and one union territory going…
Ticking time bomb in Assam: a final count of illegal immigrants
The issue of citizenship in India has been rendered very complex by a thicket of laws, rules, and executive fiats. Article 6 of the Constitution…
IF RANJEET COULD THRASH DHARMENDRA !
Cinema The badmen in films only make good punching-bags for the heroes and fight-composers, says CHAITANYA KALBAG. PICTURE Little Red Riding Hood, seated in a cinema…
Can Modi Tackle the Black Money Beast
Indians have been hiding money from their rulers for centuries. The best way to secrete your wealth away was to turn it into gold, and…
ZAHEERA QUE SERA SERA…
Zaherra’s one of those unfortunates who are jinxed from the word ‘go’. Sometime back she said, “What’s not in a name?” and changed the ‘I’…
“I Think I’ve Just Been Lucky”
“I Think I’ve Just Been Lucky” “I’M what some people call a teenage star. But re- ally. I think I’ve just been lucky. I’m told…
If Wishes Were Horses ..
“India” said James Shepherd in a recent issue of TIME, “stamps out movies like cookies – and most are just as durable.” At once, our…
The Sant’s Son
Bhindranwale never threatened, just replied to it, says his son THE traffic noise from the flyover outside the window was deafening and I could barely…
A Wee bit Sad
IT took me eight months to discover that I was living next door to a film person. And that too, because the chap appeared in…
Godspellbinding
On four Rock evenings beginning Christmas Eve, a few hundred Bombay ites Filled the Bhulabhai Desai auditorium to watch, and to listen to, the Theatre…
The Jugger Nought
Has the media lost the plot in the more wired world of today? It was a year bracketed by the Delhi gangrape and the Tehelka…
KADAMBARI- A TALE OF FIVE WOMEN
A really good film should not be concerned so much with its plot, as with its characters and the interplay of those characters. Though the…
Don Chandra
I DON’T suppose it’s anything to be proud of, but I’ve always been known to be a loquacious and garrulous person and I can out-talk…
Making films on music makers
Russell’s films on composers deal with subjects very neurotic and with personal disorders. If they were not neurotic, Russell feels, they would not have written…
The Love Scene-Drome
Round and round the rugged rock, rugged lovers run the race In any formula set-up, there’s nothing better than a few digressions on Young Love.…
Director Forum
YOU may have heard of East African Indian fleeing to Mother England, and Dr. Hastings Banda pelling 40 Malawi Asians Ever heard of an Indian…
How much self-congratulation does Modi need?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team have had a lot of time to polish the report card on their year in power. I woke…
The Hindi American
An American who acts in Hindi movies? And who’s Indian except for his fair skin and blond hair? “I don’t believe it” was the reaction…
The Pick of the Crop
MR. GIRISH KARNAD, the Director of the Film and Television Institute of India, Poona, arranged a screening of the Diploma Films 1974, on the 1st…
In Memoriam
RAJIKA KIRPALANI did not believe in gods of any kind. Yet she must have been beloved of them, for she died young too young for…
Giriraj – Raga Rage
Pandit Giriraj is one of the few wirtuosos of the “gayaki” school of sitar music in India. He recently completed a two- and-a-a-half month tour…
BURNING UP YOUR TIME
If you’re the sort of person who expects value for every paisa you spend, go see SHO- LAY, 23 reels and three and a half…
Death Of A Play
The Goan Institute present ed its maiden theatrical pro- duction on the 25th of August at the St. Xavier’s School Auditorium. Written and directed by…
Which party will you vote for in Lok Sabha polls 2014? Choice not clear or comforting
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the middle ages. You were dunked in water as a…
Nota Bene: Indian voter can turn any analysis on its head
Last weekend, just before the first phase of voting in India’s 16th general election opened, a group of people gathered in Delhi for a “nation-building”…
Poll Point: With cash, liquor flowing, who are we voting for anyway?
Several moons ago a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the…
Lok Sabha polls 2014: Who’s afraid of Narendra Modi?
Certainly not the growing number of people who believe that “free speech” means a loose mouth and the abuse of certain classes or communities. Imran…
Labour Day: India needs a hundred million jobs
By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw…
Lok Sabha polls 2014: A saga of sweat, toil, blood and tears
The end of campaigning in Amethi in a cacophony of anger, derogation, and obloquy was briefly leavened by “Twitter joining Rajinikanth.” The Superstar’s followers piled…
Lok Sabha elections 2014: Narendra Modi may have to don new avatar to take along allies, new & old
One word summed up the five-week election: certitude. From the very beginning most of us were certain that the National Democratic Alliance would win power.…
The meaning of absolute power
I was hard put on Wednesday to find an advertisement remembering Rajiv Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination. It was a telling contrast with…
Can Narendra Modi give a great government to this country?
The Rajyabhishek in the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt was a sight for sore eyes, and understandably some of us went ape even if we were…
Narendra Modi’s task: To make India less effluent, more affluent
If you believe in signs and omens, all the days and dates this year coincide with 1947, our year of independence (I have Amitabh Bachchan…
Narendra Modi government on road to revive ‘brand India’
It seemed like the rhyming slogans, the election jingles, and the grandiloquence of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto were all that we needed to shake…
Why Narendra Modi must ask his followers to heed his namesake
Three weeks and counting, and besides a bit of soft power-mongering there is no flurry of executive actions to take away one’s breath. Our impatience…
Wanted: A Modi roadshow to sell economic reforms
One of my prized possessions is a fossilised limpet, a kind of sea snail that attaches itself very, very tightly to rocks. The fossil must…
PM Narendra Modi is not China’s Deng Xiaoping and he will never be
To begin with, Modi is under microscopic watch and Deng never was. Modi has a good majority in the lower house of Parliament, but that…
Despite BJP’s majority, rowdy scenes in both houses undermine Parliament’s productivity
Our members of Parliament sowed the wind in the 15th Lok Sabha and are reaping the whirlwind in the 16th Lok Sabha. The last Lok…
Planning omission: The hydra-headed monster of Yojana Bhavan
When a little girl named Topsy is asked in Uncle Tom’s Cabin if she knew who made her, she says “I expect I grow’d.” This…
Team Modi wobbles a bit but hasn’t lost its balance
Change comes stealing in on padded feet in the Narendra Modi government, and change is starting to happen in the offices of his ministers. One…
Four weaknesses India needs to overcome to build a strong foreign policy
This weekend Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Nepal on his third foreign trip in ten weeks. By the end of September he will…
Will PM Narendra Modi declare independence from poverty?
We are hopefully in the last of this summer’s dog days, and Sirius (or Svana as it is known in Hindu astrology) will glow a…
Hindu is as Hindu does, but does Modi?
It was a very Hindu week, starting with Raksha Bandhan and ending with Janmashthami, and midway through we were treated to fireworks by Yogi Adityanath,…
PM Narendra Modi and FM Arun Jaitley seem to have meekly accepted targets set by UPA
Somewhere, through the unbearable din of television and anti-social media this week, I saw one tweet that plaintively asked why we were hearing so much…
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…
The Don of Dhanbad
DHANBAD’s dreaded Mafia gangs were riveting topics of conversation last fortnight, and for different reasons. Film actor Shatrughan Sinha, with the blessings of the ruling…
India aide says Pakistan missile triggered n-tests
NEW DELHI, May 13 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s test launch of its longest-range missile last month triggered this week’s series of underground nuclear tests by India, a…
India’s Marxist veteran looks back with pride
CALCUTTA, India, June 15 (Reuters) – The leader of the world’s oldest democratically elected communist government looked back on his 20 years in power and…
India’s Gujarat state aims to be investment draw
NEW DELHI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – India’s Gujarat state aims to be a primary focus for foreign investors, particularly in infrastructure like ports, power and…
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…
MANILA PHONE LOAN MARKS MAJOR CREDITOR INITIATIVE
15 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 15, Reuters – A 288 million dollar syndicated loan for the Philippines Long…
CALCUTTA -THE CITY THAT REFUSES TO DIE
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…
INTERVIEW-AMBIKA SONI
“WE WERE ALL COWARDS!” When Anand Mohan and Chaitanya Kalbag called on Mrs. Ambika Soni in Delhi on August 17, they expected her to come…
INTERVIEW-L.K. ADVANI
INFORMATION & BROADCASTING MINISTER L.K. ADVANI ‘I Am Not Happy with The Pattern of Newspaper Ownership’ Transindia: Mr. Advani, many people feel today that the…
INTERVIEW-JANATA PARTY PRESIDENT CHANDRA SHEKHAR : Mrs. Gandhi Will Have To Answer To Many Things
Transindia: Mr. Chandra Shekhar, do you think you have one of the most thankless jobs in the country today, what with having to build up…
R. K. NARAYAN-THE MAN FROM MALGUDI
It took me some time to discover Rasipuram Krishna swami Narayan’s house. Yadavagiri, the suburb of Mysore City, where Narayan stays, is an incredibly quiet…
Interview of Kumar Mangalam Birla
Few of us know that KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, produced the critically acclaimed Hindi movie Black. Or that he has…
INTERVIEW-PRIME MINISTER MORARJI DESAI
‘Is Drinking A Ritual “? Then I Think ‘It Is Better to Close Our Diplomatic Missions!’ The appointment is at 1 pm at the Prime…
INTERVIEW-PROF. C.N. VAKIL
The Government Is Helping Create A Privileged Class!’ Professor C.N. Vakil, eminent economist, formerly Director, School of Economics and Sociology, University of Bombay, and Director,…
Interview with Narayana Murthy
Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy has seen it all: bootstrapping an enterprise with what is loose change today, going on sales calls riding pillion on…
WILL THE EUPHORIA REMAIN ?
Gandhi must have been passing through an extremely clairvoyant phase when he came up with this statement in the Thirties. In the thirty years that…
Frozen in the Headlights
Poor Manmohan Singh is caught between the Pros and the Cons. The Pros in the Opposition are telling the prime minister, who has never seemed…
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…
TOURISM – A NEW LOOK AT OLD PLACES
Been away from India for some years? Planning to go back this year, family in tow, for a long vacation? If the answer is ‘Yes’…
INTERVIEW : Brahmananda Reddy’
CONGRESS PARTY PRESIDENT- BRAHMANANDA REDDY “We Will Return to Power Soon” Transindia: Mr. Reddy, many people feel that the Congress Party has had a great…
INDIAN WILDLIFE – CAN THE TIGER SAVE ITS STRIPES?
“Going in quest thereof, one of our Soldiers, a Youth, killed a Tiger-Royal; it was brought home by 30 or 40 Combies (Koonbee), the Body…
From Words to Blows
VIOLENCE is an unfortunate fact of life in Delhi University. That was bloodily emphasized on February 16 when Dilip Simeon, 32, history lecturer at Ramjas…
TARAPUR – CLOSE TO SHUTDOWN?
“I have said that we will never take to nuclear weapons even if this country is going to be destroyed in the absence of (such…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The Best of intentions go awry sometimes. That aphorism has struck home at INDIA TODAY where the effort to do a job better and more…
Letter from the Editor
ONE of the lesser-known areas of media responsibility is its relationship with the law. It is a relationship which is generally little understood, not having…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
DEMOCRACY sometimes teaches strange lessons, and the strangest of them all is currently being acted out in the remote Northeastern state of Assam. Since January…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
THERE are, said the poet Wallace Stevens, 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. The essence of that particular truth came home forcefully last fortnight…
Book Review: My Years in an Indian Prison
So much is being written about political prisoners in India these days, that the layman might succumb to the temptation of focusing more on the…
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
NEWS does not have to scream from the headlines to be news. In fact, it is probably one of the failings of the media that…
ENOCH POWELL ‘Belfast May Seem an Enviable Place’
The Right Honorable Enoch Powell, PC, MBE, has been a major catalyst in racialist ferment for a long time now. Powell, who celebrated his sixty-fourth…
Letter from the Editor
THERE can be little more excitement for the media than to chronicle political events from inception to climax. Opportunities tend to be rare, but as…
FEELIN’ GOOD
IT IS GOOD THAT WE ARE FEELING BUCKLED UP AT THE BEGINNING OF 2018. Major economies expect growth in tandem for the first time since…
JAYME SAYS MANILA TAKES HEART FROM MEXICO DEAL
6 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 6 – The options available in solving the global debt crisis had broadened…
MANILA OUTLINES 1988 BORROWING, BUDGET PLANS
7 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 7 – The Philippine government will issue treasury bills and notes totalling 29.8…
VIOLENT PHILIPPINE POLLS SEEN MARKING RETURN OF OLD POLITICS
17 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 17, Reuter – Monday’s local elections are billed as President Corazon Aquino’s last…
India ponders prospect of a new Gandhi at its helm
13 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The resemblance to Indira Gandhi is eerie —…
PHILIPPINES MUST NOW FOCUS ON ECONOMY, ANALYSTS SAY
19 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 19, Reuter – The Philippines has emerged from a tumultuous year with democracy…
Focus- Hindu leader says he target of India bombs
14 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 14 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s main opposition party said…
Philippine economy needs steady hand to keep recovery from going stagnant
20 January 1988 The Globe and Mail B24 English All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved. The Philippines has experienced…
Deadly blast Triggers riots in South India
15 February 1998 The Washington Post A30 Copyright 1998, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved The leader of India’s main opposition party said today…
ENVOY SAYS U.S. TO MAINTAIN STRONG ROLE IN PHILIPPINE ECONOMY
22 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 22, Reuter – The United States is committed to helping the Philippines achieve…
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…
MANILA CHARGES USDA DELAYING SUGAR RE-EXPORT PLAN
22 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 22 – Sugar industry officials said the Philippines might not be able to…
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…
DEVELOPING NATIONS URGED TO EASE INVESTMENT BARS
25 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 25 – Developing nations are more likely to attract foreign investment by easing…
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…
JAPANESE COMPANIES STEP UP ASIA-PACIFIC INVESTMENT
27 January 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Jan 27 – The yen’s rapid appreciation has led many Japanese companies to step…
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…
MANILA FINANCE MINISTER SEES U.S. BASES AS DEBT LEVER
1 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 1, Reuter – The Philippines is exploring ways of reducing its massive foreign…
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…
U.S. IN QUANDARY OVER MANILA SUGAR RE-EXPORT PLAN
8 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 8 – U.S. Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng is in a quandary over a…
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)…
PRIVATISATION PROVES TO BE GORDIAN KNOT FOR MANILA TRUST
10 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 10, Reuter – A sword poised over a Gordian knot is the official…
EUROPEAN INVESTORS SHY AWAY FROM PHILIPPINES
16 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 16 – A stream of unsettling news from the Philippines has held back…
W. GERMAN MINISTER EXPECTED TO BOOST EUROPEAN TIES TO MANILA
16 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 16, Reuter – West German Minister of Economics Martin Bangemann is expected to…
PHILIPPINES MOVES TO SPEED UP DEBT/EQUITY SWAPS
19 February 1988 Reuters News (c) 1988 Reuters Limited English MANILA, Feb 19 – The Philippines plans to speed up its sluggish debt/equity swap program,…
PHILIPPINES BIT PLAYER IN DEBT REFORM – FERNANDEZ
19 February 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Feb 19 – The Philippines’ 27.8 billion dollar foreign debt makes it a bit…
PHILIPPINES’ 1989 BUDGET SET AT 190 BILLION PESOS
8 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 8, Reuter – The Philippines will have a 1989 deficit of 28.5 billion…
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…
India says China has surveillance base in Myanmar
3 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 3 (Reuters) – India’s defence minister said on Sunday China had built…
India’s BJP moves quickly to deliver nuclear punch
11 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 11 (Reuters) – India’s three underground nuclear tests on Monday were…
FEWER SIESTAS, LEANER STAFF BOOST MANILA TAX REVENUES
9 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 9, Reuter – Fewer staff members taking fewer siestas may help the Philippines…
Defiant India takes on world with nuclear tests
11 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 12 (Reuters) – India prepared on Tuesday to face the world’s…
India unmoved by prospect of being global pariah
12 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 12 (Reuters) – India was engulfed by waves of international anger and…
India starts to count sanctions cost over n-tests
14 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 14 (Reuters) – India woke up on Thursday to the first full…
India wrestles with moral dilemma of nuclear clout
17 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 17 (Reuters) – “If the radiance of a thousand suns…
Interview- India has been a “soft state”
27 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India’s nuclear tests alone will not make the country…
India’s Fernandes- former rebel, now with a cause
27 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – In June 1976, after a year in hiding, George…
Focus- India says Pakistan N-tests justify policy
29 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 28 (Reuters) – The Indian government reacted calmly on Thursday to news…
Interview- India leader dismisses “ping-pong balls”
29 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 28 (Reuters) – India’s defence minister said on Thursday he did not…
MANILA SPECULATORS PLAY ROULETTE WITH OIL STOCKS
18 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 18, Reuter – Volatile penny oil stocks have raised trading on Manila’s two…
USDA SEES PHILIPPINE AGRICULTURE STAGNANT IN 1988
22 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 22, Reuter – Falling sugar and coconut production is expected to lead to…
Analysis India pundits do not see a new Cold war
29 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 29 (Reuters) – India and Pakistan must now sit down and talk…
Interview- India’s Sinha wants to go for growth
2 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 2 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha put up a spirited…
PHILIPPINE BANKS HEALTHIER, SEEK LOWER COSTS
25 March 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, March 25, Reuter – Philippine banks have largely recovered from years of crisis, but…
Interview- India targets not just “hope and prayer”
3 June 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 3 (Reuters) – India’s fiscal targets for the current year are not…
Aquino Again on Defensive After Honasan Escape
3 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 3, Reuter – Coup leader Colonel Gregorio Honasan’s escape from captivity on Saturday…
PHILIPPINE GNP SEEN GROWING 6.1 PCT IN 1988
4 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 4, Reuter – The Philippines’ gross national product (GNP) is expected to expand…
CHINA DISCUSSING SIX LOANS WITH ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
18 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 18, Reuter – China is negotiating with the Manila-based Asian Development Bank for…
BUSINESSMEN LASH OUT AT MANILA DEBT/EQUITY PROGRAM
18 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 18, Reuter – Filipino and foreign businessmen have launched a sharp attack on…
JAPAN STRUGGLES TO USE ADB TO RECYCLE SURPLUSES
20 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 20, Reuter – Japan’s attempt to use the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to…
ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK STILL AWASH WITH FUNDS
20 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 20, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is still awash with funds,…
MANILA’S DEBATED LAND REFORM PLEDGED 66 MLN DLRS
26 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 26, Reuter – The Philippines has received pledges of aid totalling 66 million…
SUITABLE CHINESE PROJECTS HARD TO FIND — ADB HEAD
27 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 27, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has found it difficult to…
TAIWAN SAYS ROW OVER NAME CHANGE CONTINUES WITH ADB
27 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 27, Reuter – Taipei has ended a two-year boycott of the Asian Development…
JAPAN-U.S. TUSSLE LIKELY TO DOMINATE ADB MEETING
27 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 27, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank annual meeting starting on Thursday is…
SOUTH PACIFIC ISLANDS WANT OWN DEVELOPMENT BANK
28 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 28, Reuter – South Pacific island nations want to form a new regional…
AQUINO SAYS ADB LEADERSHIP SHOULD REMAIN ASIAN
28 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 28, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting opened with a call…
USSR SAYS ADB MEMBERSHIP WOULD AID RESTRUCTURING
29 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 29, Reuter – The Soviet Union’s interest in joining the Asian Development Bank…
ADB COMES UNDER FIRE FOR LENDING POLICIES
29 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 29, Reuter – The Asian Development Bank’s lending policies came under fire at…
India’s weary Kashmiris told- “Go see a movie”
7 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) – A who’s who of Indian Kashmiris turned out in…
TAIWAN CONTINUES PROTEST OVER NAME CHANGE AT ADB MEETING
29 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 29, Reuter – Taiwan delegates to the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting continued…
ANALYSIS-India, Pakistan return to square one
31 July 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 31 (Reuters) – The collapse of efforts to revive peace talks between…
AFGHANISTAN ASKS FOR AID TO REPAIR ECONOMY
30 April 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, April 30, Reuter – Afghanistan appealed on Saturday for the Asian Development Bank to…
India general sees no danger of nuclear exchange
6 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The general commanding Indian troops in the tinderbox Kashmir…
INDIA LIBERALISING AT OWN PACE, MINISTER SAYS
1 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 1, Reuter – India is loosening controls on industry, investment and imports but…
INTERVIEW-Kashmir might spark N-war – separatist
7 August 1998 Reuters News English (C) 1998 Reuters Limited SRINAGAR, India, Aug 7 (Reuters) – India and Pakistan could wage nuclear war over the…
PHILIPPINES SAYS IT WOULD WELCOME U.S. AID PLAN
9 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 9, Reuter – The Philippine government said on Monday it was awaiting information…
Indian soldier caught in grinding Kashmir strife
9 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited BARAMULLA, India, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Mahendra Kumar is a typical “sepoy”, the lowest rank…
DESPITE FEUD, SAN MIGUEL RIDES HIGH ON BEER BOOM
9 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 9, Reuter – Thirsty Filipinos drank nearly a billion liters of San Miguel…
Focus- India’s Congress hammers BJP in state polls
29 November 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s Congress party swept to electoral victory in three…
India’s Vajpayee should “go for broke”, rival says
29 November 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s wounded Bharatiya Janata Party should ram through an…
PHILIPPINE SENATE HARDENS STAND ON DEBT
11 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 11, Reuter – The Philippine Senate has ended a six-month lull by taking…
Interview- Mercedes-Benz bullish on India Market
1 December 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Mercedes-Benz India Ltd is bullish about the Indian car…
Hosokawa has final fleeting moment among blossoms
20 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 20 (Reuter) – “Blossoms in the air; unable to stay longer; and still…
BankAmerica committed to India wholesale banking
10 December 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 10 (Reuters) – BankAmerica Corp will sell its retail banking business in…
FOCUS-At least nine dead in severe India quake
29 March 1999 07:16 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 29 (Reuters) – At least nine people died in two north…
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…
FOCUS-India says Afghans in Kashmir intrusion
26 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 25 (Reuters) – Afghan mercenaries, likely commanded by Pakistani army officers, have…
PHILIPPINE SENATE APPEARS TO SOFTEN STAND ON NUCLEAR BILL
12 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 12, Reuter – The Philippine Senate is apparently softening its stand on a…
FOREIGN MEDIA PAID FOR PHILIPPINE ATTACKS – EX-DEFENCE CHIEF
17 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 17, Reuter – Former Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile said on Tuesday that…
Dalai Lama accuses China of “cultural genocide”
9 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 9 (Reuter) – Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Sunday accused…
Nepal aims at independent central bank
22 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 22 (Reuter) – Nepal’s coalition government plans to grant the Himalayan kingdom’s central…
Nepal PM says government safe — for now
23 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 23 (Reuter) – Nepal’s fragile coalition government is not in any danger despite…
Japanese says Indian bureaucracy very “inflexible”
24 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 24 (Reuters) – Japan is keen on expanding investment in India but…
Indian Kashmir talks offer sows confusion, anger
28 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 28 (Reuters) – India’s Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral has caused anger…
U.S. BASES IN PHILIPPINES STIR UP WAR OF WORDS
13 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 13, Reuter – The U.S. bases in the Philippines have sparked a superpower…
PHILIPPINES NEEDS U.S. AID PACKAGE NOW, MINISTER SAYS
17 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 17, Reuter – The Philippines needs a U.S.-sponsored multi-billion dollar aid plan immediately…
PHILIPPINE BANKS SEEN LOSING OUT ON CURRENCY DEALS
18 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 18, Reuter – Philippine banks are missing opportunities by restricting foreign exchange trading…
PHILIPPINE ECONOMY MAY OVERHEAT – CENTRAL BANKER
18 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 18, Reuter – The Philippine economy is growing strongly in real terms but…
WRAPUP-India hits Kashmir militants with air power
26 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 26 (Reuters) – India on Wednesday launched its first peacetime air strikes…
ASIAN RICE SUPPLY PLAGUED BY SHORTAGES, SOARING PRICES
24 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited LOS BANOS, Philippines, May 24, Reuter – Asia’s rice producers, reeling from the effects of…
PHILIPPINES TO MAKE PAINFUL ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENTS
25 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 25, Reuter – The Philippine economy is growing strongly well into the third…
PHILIPPINE AIR LOSS SAID TO THREATEN PRIVATISATION
27 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 27, Reuter – Philippine Airlines Inc’s loss in the 1987/88 fiscal year may…
ANALYSIS-India, Pakistan caught in undeclared war
27 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India was on a roll on Wednesday. It unleashed…
JAYME SAYS NO MAGIC FIX FOR PHILIPPINE DEBT
31 May 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, May 31, Reuter – There are no magical solutions to the Philippines’ heavy foreign…
WRAPUP-India loses planes, lashes out at Pakistan.
28 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India suffered a sharp reverse on Thursday in its…
TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY – THE PHILIPPINES’ DEBT DEBATE
5 June 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 5, Reuter – To pay or not — that is the question facing…
Philippine debate over debt payments alarms foreign banks
6 June 1988 The Toronto Star FIN B4 English Copyright (c) 1988 The Toronto Star MANILA, Philippines — “No one‘s talking new money, so we…
PHILIPPINE OFFICIALS LEAVE ANTI-NUCLEAR ISSUE TO AQUINO
19 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 19, Reuter – Philippine officials said on Tuesday that It was up to…
PHILIPPINES WELCOMES U.S. SUGAR QUOTA INCREASE
26 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 26, Reuter – The Philippines welcomes a decision by the U.S. Department of…
WRAPUP-India bombs Kashmir rebels, warns Pakistan.
27 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 26 (Reuters) – India unleashed two waves of air strikes on…
PHILIPPINES TO ASK BANKS, IMF FOR NEW LOANS
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – The Philippines plans to approach its creditor banks for a…
AQUINO, SECURE IN POWER, PUTS ON BRASS KNUCKLES
28 July 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 28, Reuter – Philippine President Corazon Aquino, secure in power near the end…
Wrapup- Indian helicopter downed in Kashmir crisis
29 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 28 (Reuters) – India suffered a second setback on Friday in its…
Wrapup- Kashmir crisis heats up after Stinger use
29 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 28 (Reuters) – India suffered a second setback on Friday in an…
MANILA SAID SEEKING BANKS’ AID ON 1989 FINANCE GAP
3 August 1988 Reuters News English (c) 1988 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 3, Reuter – The Philippines has told its commercial bank creditors they must…
Interview- Onus on Pakistan in Kashmir-Indian aide
30 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 30 (Reuters) – A top Indian official said on Sunday it…
INDIA ECONOMY SEEN OPENING MORE, WHOEVER WINS POLL
20 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 20, Reuters – Whoever wins this week’s Indian elections will face some…
India vows no pause in Kashmir assault for talks
1 June 1999 22:59 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 1 (Reuters) – India will not halt its air and ground…
Rightwing Indian Leader Predicts Instability After Polls
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 21, Reuters – The leader of an increasingly powerful rightwing Hindu party…
Interview- “no relenting in Kashmir
2 June 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 1 (Reuters) – India’s External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said on Tuesday…
CALCUTTA’S INDIANS TAKE ELECTIONS IN STRIDE
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuters – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from…
ANALYSIS-India faces hard choices in Kashmir.
13 June 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 13 (Reuters) – India and Pakistan, daggers drawn in Kashmir, held a…
INDIA’S POLITICAL INSTABILITY SEEN SLOWING GROWTH
INDIA’S POLITICAL INSTABILITY SEEN SLOWING GROWTH. 22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 22, Reuters – Political instability likely…
INTERVIEW-India FinSec sees high economic growth.
17 June 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 17 (Reuters) – India’s Finance Secretary Vijay Kelkar said on Thursday the…
INSTABILITY SEEN SLOWING GROWTH IN RESOURCE-STRAPPED INDIA
INSTABILITY SEEN SLOWING GROWTH IN RESOURCE-STRAPPED INDIA. 22 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Reuter – Political instability likely…
INTERVIEW-Philips India not slim enough, says MD
29 June 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, June 29 (Reuters) – Consumer electronics firm Philips India Ltd has shed nearly…
WIDOW OF INDIRA GANDHI ASSASSIN SET TO ENTER INDIA PARLIAMENT
23 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited CHAMKAUR SAHIB, India, Nov 23, Reuter – Long before Bimal Kaur Khalsa’s motorcade churns into…
ANALYSIS-India torn over scope of Kashmir combat
4 July 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 4 (Reuters) – India’s commanders are fighting with “one arm tied behind…
26 KILLED ON SECOND DAY OF INDIA’S GENERAL ELECTION
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuter – At least 26 people were killed on Friday on…
Over 1,000 infiltrators still in Kashmir-India
8 July 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 8 (Reuters) – India’s army has recaptured key points in Kashmir and…
EXHAUSTED GANDHI ENDS CAMPAIGN IN MUD, OPPOSITION JUBILANT
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuters – Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wound up an exhausting…
Interview- India says Pakistan must restore trust
18 July 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 18 (Reuters) – Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on Sunday urged Pakistan…
TROOPS AT BATTLE STATIONS AS INDIA’S PUNJAB GOES TO THE POLLS
26 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited CHANDIGARH, India, Nov 26, Reuters – India’s bloody general election entered its final stage on…
STALLED PROJECT MAY HOLD CLUE TO COMMUNIST SUPPORT FOR GANDHI
27 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 27, Reuter – A giant petrochemical project could hold a clue…
BUSINESS NOT TOO WORRIED BY INDIA ELECTION OUTCOME
28 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 28, Reuters -Political instability in India may be in prospect after…
INDIA LOOKING TO SUBSTANTIAL AID FROM IMF, DONORS, OFFICIAL SAYS
27 August 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India hopes to receive substantial financial aid from a consortium of donors…
ASIAN STOCK MARKETS HUNT FOR INCENTIVES, DOLLAR WEAKENS VS MARK
17 September 1991 Reuters News English (c) 1991 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuter – Most Asian stock markets, casting around for fresh stimulus, weakened on Tuesday…
INDIA WILL ASK IMF FOR MORE FUNDS – MINISTER
13 April 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Reuters – India intends to ask the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for more contingency…
Villagers play tag with death in India’ Kashmir
6 August 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NAMBLA, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The people of Nambla are sitting ducks in the…
Interview- India flays “imperialist” nuclear qualms
8 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 8 (Reuters) – India rejects fears by “yesterday’s imperialists or today’s new…
India’s Fernandes insists Pakistan PM was in dark
31 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 31 (Reuters) – India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes said on Monday he…
JAPAN APPROVES $87 MILLION SPENDING PLAN
29 August 1992 Los Angeles Daily News Valley B2 English (Copyright 1992) The Japanese government Friday approved an $87 billion spending package – the nation’s…
INTERVIEW-India’s Fernandes sees no nuclear danger.
31 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 31 (Reuters) – India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes said on Monday he…
INTERVIEW-Indian general fears return to proxy war.
13 July 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 13 (Reuters) – Watching vanquished Islamic guerrillas retreat to Pakistan, India’s top…
Asia satellite TV successes prompt local response
28 December 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 28, Reuter – Satellite and cable television is approaching rice status as a…
INTERVIEW-Early Kashmir spring helped India.
18 July 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 18 (Reuters) – India’s military intelligence chief said on Sunday that Pakistan’s…
Satellite TV no pie in the sky in Asian megamarket
28 December 1992 Reuters News English (c) 1992 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 28, Reuter – Satellite and cable television is approaching the status of rice…
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…
The awesome explosion of Asia’s airwaves As viewers tune in to the cornucopia, some governments worry about foreign encroachment
29 December 1992 The Globe and Mail C3 English All material copyright Thomson Canada Limited or its licensors. All rights reserved. Tokyo SATELLITE and cable…
Vietnam urges Bush to build on Clinton’s work
29 May 2001 Reuters News English (c) 2001 Reuters Limited HANOI, May 29 (Reuters) – Vietnam urged President George Bush on Tuesday to build on…
Satellite and cable TV catching on fast in Asia
4 January 1993 Straits Times English (c) 1993 Singapore Press Holdings Limited Some govts feel threatened by foreign encroachment on airwaves TOKYO – Satellite and…
Pound crashes in Tokyo, Asian stocks mixed
1 February 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Feb 1, Reuter – Currency speculators who sparked a fresh crisis in the European…
Reuters journalist buried in Australia
28 November 2001 Reuters News English (c) 2001 Reuters Limited HOBART, Australia, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Australian Harry Burton, a Reuters cameraman killed with…
Indian reforms are irreversible, lawmaker says
22 April 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 22, Reuters – One of the architects of India’s radical economic reforms said…
INTERVIEW-Thai PM promises free press.
18 March 2002 19:56 Reuters News English (c) 2002 Reuters Limited BANGKOK, March 18 (Reuters) – Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, embroiled in a row…
Japan breathes easier on yen but danger lurks
20 August 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Aug 20 (Reuter) – The Japanese government heaved a sigh of relief on Friday…
INTERVIEW-Thai exchange sees 50 pct hike in market cap in 2002
19 March 2002 Reuters News English (c) 2002 Reuters Limited BANGKOK, March 19 (Reuters) – The head of Thailand’s stock exchange, one of the best…
Interview- Thailand sees growth over three pct
20 March 2002 Reuters News English (c) 2002 Reuters Limited BANGKOK, March 20 (Reuters) – Thailand will see growth of at least three percent this…
Japan’s economy sinks deeper into mire
14 September 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Sept 14 (Reuter) – Japan’s sickly economy has been contracting as its stubborn trade…
Japan drags itself towards an open rice market
13 December 1993 Reuters News English (c) 1993 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Dec 13 (Reuter) – Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Masayoshi Takemura said Tokyo had every intention…
INTERVIEW-Pakistan says US policies polarise world
14 April 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited ISLAMABAD, April 14 (Reuters) – Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror,…
INTERVIEW-Pakistan says its missiles better than India’s
15 April 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited ISLAMABAD, April 15 (Reuters) – Pakistan’s foreign minister on Tuesday warned India of massive retaliation…
Japan opposition leader said ready to press PM bid
15 April 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, April 15 (Reuter) – A leading opposition politician is preparing to revolt against his…
INTERVIEW-UPDATE 2-S.Korea buoyed by new N.Korea talks stance.
27 May 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited SEOUL, May 27 (Reuters) – South Korea is encouraged by North Korea’s softer stance…
India aims to give 6 pct of people phones by 2000
21 September 1994 Reuters News English (c) 1994 Reuters Limited TOKYO, Sept 21 (Reuters) – India’s new telecommunications policy will open the domestic market to…
Wrapup 1- China undecided on another bank bailout
12 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) – China has not ruled out another big bailout of…
Nuclear war unlikely over Kashmir, leader says
6 February 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Kashmir region said on Thursday…
Commonwealth chief says African democracy growing
20 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 20 (Reuter) – Democracy has taken root in most African countries but…
INTERVIEW-China bank watchdog upbeat on foreign players.
12 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) – China’s new banking regulator said on Friday foreign banks…
India fields seasoned negotiator at Pakistan talks
26 March 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 26 (Reuters) – Salman Haidar will be an immovable object facing a…
Taiwan seeks banking concessions from China
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Taiwan will permit its banks to do business in China…
Taiwan blames China over name change controversy
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – China is to blame for growing frustrations in Taiwan that…
INTERVIEW-Taiwan says it still has upper hand over China.
15 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Taiwan still holds the upper hand against China in trade…
India aims to grant autonomy to state-owned media
27 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India is determined to grant autonomy to state-controlled television…
INTERVIEW-Washington’s Taiwan envoy bemoans rigid China.
16 September 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited TAIPEI, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Douglas Paal, Washington’s unofficial ambassador to Taipei, must choose…
Marxist says one-party rule in India is “finished”
15 June 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited CALCUTTA, India, June 15 (Reuters) – India is not likely to see a return to…
WRAPUP 1-INTERVIEW-S.Korea’s Roh says North threat is bluster.
17 October 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited SEOUL, Oct 17 (Reuters) – South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun dismissed North Korea’s threat to…
INTERVIEW-India’s Tata bets on global market for growth.
9 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BOMBAY, Dec 9 (Reuters) – India’s largest truck and bus maker Tata, riding a dramatic…
INTERVIEW-Hindalco eyes expansion, acquisitions for growth.
9 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited BOMBAY, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Hindalco Industries, a leading Indian maker of non-ferrous metals, aims…
India’s Kashmir talks offer — flip-flop or ploy?
28 July 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, July 28 (Reuter) – India’s Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral performed one more…
INTERVIEW-India hopes to cut oil imports with new discoveries.
11 December 2003 Reuters News English (c) 2003 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 11 (Reuters) – India hopes to reduce its dependence on imported…
India relives midnight “tryst with destiny”
14 August 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (Reuters) – India’s leaders gathered in their parliament’s majestic Central Hall…
Sri Lanka’s garment makers want trade, not aid
9 January 2005 Reuters News English (c) 2005 Reuters Limited COLOMBO, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The only problem Sri Lanka’s intrepid garment makers faced after…
India celebrates half-century of independence
15 August 1997 08:15 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (Reuters) – India put on a dazzling show of fireworks,…
“I came under her spell,” says Teresa’s biographer
Reuters News 5 September 1997 English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 6 (Reuters) – An Indian bureaucrat who wrote two biographies of Mother…
RBI will not allow rupee volatility – Chidambaram.
29 August 1997 14:33 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the rupee’s…
FOCUS-Queen’s India visit hit by row over protocol
15 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s visit to India was hit by fresh…
India raises import duties to fight deficit
16 September 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Reuter) – India’s government, clearly alarmed by a fiscal deficit that…
Indian politics in convulsion, election beckons
20 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 20 (Reuters) – India faced the prospect of fresh elections on Thursday…
Kashmir group says exhumed body is of its leader
30 September 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 30 (Reuters) – A militant group in Kashmir on Tuesday said an…
India looks back in frustration at queen’s visit
19 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) – India looked back in frustration on Sunday at a…
Britain’s Labour accused of Kashmir freedom agenda
16 October 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth’s tour of India slid deeper into controversy…
Interview with Ellen Kullman
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Earthy Tales
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With this kind of rebellious example, how will fair play and righteousness prevail? Won’t the lower castes get out of hand? In this decadent age,…
INTERVIEW – India lacked grit on Tamil Tigers — envoy
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Malaysia says has dismantled Islamic terror cells
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Indian elections hold promise of more uncertainty.
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FOCUS-India parliament leader bullish on democracy
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INTERVIEW-Hindu party pushes radical economics
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INTERVIEW-India can’t be ignored – A.T. Kearney CEO
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The Rainmaker
The Mac II, launched on March 2. 1987, cost $5.500 and was the first computer with a colour graphical interface. Three years earlier Apple had…
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New Business Families
The day this issue of Business Today went to press, IBM Corporation completed one hundred years. What started as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, manufacturing computing scales,…
Bhopal residents stay clear of disaster site
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BHUTAN — Remote land strives to Preserve identity
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Indian unrest fans fears of mass exodus
Reuter News Agency 9 March 1986 The Toronto Star Sun H3 English Copyright (c) 1986 The Toronto Star SRINAGAR, INDIA — “The large-scale arson, pillage,…
Aquino Ignores Coup Waning to visit rebel island
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Manila wants better repayment terms than lenders gave Mexico
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Shine On, You Crazy Diamonds
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Christ and communism make explosive mix in Philippines
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Pressure to Act Soon / Land Reform Issue Splits Aquino Aides
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10 Most Powerful Women in Indian Business
They say nothing sharpens our minds as much as high danger or a threat to our survival. We are prepared to stand and fight when…
Philippine National oil head opposes privatisation
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Wanted- A Big Bang Budget
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Philippine Coconut Chief to lobby against EC tax
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Philippine Central Bank Chief Sees Health Growth in 1987
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World Bank can aid Philippine Land Development, Official Says
2 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 2, Reuter – The World Bank’s policies prevent it lending money to the…
Philippines Revises Reform Plan, Puts Off Land Distribution
3 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 3, Reuter – The latest draft of the Philippines’ ambitious land reform program…
Japan Pledges More Economic Aid for the Philippines
3 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 3, Reuter – Japan will expand its assistance to the Philippines and encourage…
Philippine Interest Payments Seen Rising
8 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 5 – The Philippines’ interest payments on its foreign debt will increase by…
Manila Bank Closure Exposes Strains in Philippine System
8 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 8, Reuter – The closure last month of the Manila Banking Corporation, one…
Philippine economy grows fast enough to fulfil Manila’s aims
8 June 1987 The Toronto Star MEZ B11 English Copyright (c) 1987 The Toronto Star MANILA — The government is aiming at GNP growth of…
Philippine Investment Code Set for Aquino Decree
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Japan Sees Better Economic Ties With Philippines
10 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 10 – Japan feels the political and economic situation in the Philippines has…
Land Bank Chief Criticises Philippine Land Ceiling
11 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 11 – Proposed land reforms that would limit all holdings in the Philippines…
Manila Central Bank Chief Welcomes Debt Compromise
11 June 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, June 11 – Philippine Central Bank Governor Jose Fernandez said he welcomed a compromise…
Manila Unloads Sugar Stocks to curb price rise
17 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 17 – The Philippines” Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA) has ordered all its reserve…
Manila Debt Pact seen pre-empting new Congress
20 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 20 – The speedy and cordial conclusion of a 13.2 billion dollar debt…
Philippine Central Bank Report on Economic Performance
21 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 21 – The Philippines’ foreign debt was 28.58 billion dollars at the end…
Aquino land reforms seen to stop short of radical change
22 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 22, Reuter – Held out as a radical step that would end decades…
Row Intensifies Over Philippine Oil Privatisation
23 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 23 – A row over the proposed privatisation of Petron Corp, a fully-owned…
Protests Mount Over Aquino’s Land Reform Program
23 July 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 23, Reuter – Protests by both landowners and poor farmworkers mounted today over…
Aquino Lashes out at Creditors, Vows to Fight Enemies
27 July 1987 English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 27, Reuter – President Corazon Aquino lashed out at the Philippines’ creditor banks today, charging…
U.S. Bases Vital for Philippine Security, Official Warns
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Manila Debt Moves Could Disrupt Growth
30 July 1987 Reuters news (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, July 30 – Foreign debt has suddenly become a dirty phrase in Manila, but any…
PM-Philippine-Minister (News Analysis, Scheduled) Murder in Manila Revives Debate Over Violence, Vigilantes
4 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 4, Reuter – The killing of a top official known for his strong…
Philippine Minister Attacks Call for Debt Repudiation
7 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 7, Reuter – The growing call in the Philippines for a repudiation of…
Philippine Officials Get Death Threats, Security Tighetened
7 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 7, Reuter – Extra bodyguards were assigned to top Philippine officials today after…
Typhoon Betty Hits Central Philippines
12 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 12, Reuter – About 500 families were evacuated today from the central Philippine…
AQUINO NOT KEPT FULLY INFORMED OF BARCLAYS ROW, OFFICIAL SAYS
13 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 13, Reuter – President Corazon Aquino was not kept fully Informed throughout a…
Typhoon Betty Slams into Central Philippines
13 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 13, Reuter – Typhoon Betty slammed into the central Philippines today, killing a…
Foreign Firms to be allowed Manila Listing
18 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 18 – Foreign companies will be allowed to list their stock on the…
Manila Oil Price Rise Seen Nudging Up Inflation
20 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 20 – Last week’s 20 pct rise in the prices of petrol, diesel…
Elders trying to buy into Philippine Bank
21 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 21 – Elders Finance, a division of (Elders IXL Ltd), is interested in…
Philippine Landowners warn of violence over reforms
25 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 25, Reuter – A major coalition of Philippine landowners today labelled President Corazon…
Civilians Cheer as Fighting Rages at Manila Military Camp
28 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 28, Reuter – Buildings blazed and streets shook in Manila today in the…
Manila Coup Bid Seen Damaging Business Confidence
28 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 28 – The Philippines’ latest coup attempt, the most violent in President Corazon…
Business Sees Coup Attempt As Warning to Aquino
31 August 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Aug 31 – Manila’s stock markets held steady in the first session after Friday’s…
Loyalty, Treachery Blur in Divided Philippine Military
1 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 1, Reuter – “Who goes there — friend or foe?” That traditional challenge…
Aquino Vows to Defend Bisieged Philippine Democracy
4 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 4, Reuter – President Corazon Aquino said on Friday democracy had taken one…
Low pay, poor conditions fuel unrest in Philippine Military
4 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 4, Reuter – Low pay and poor working conditions have fuelled unrest in…
Philippine Cabinet Resigns Leaving Aquino Free Hand
9 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 9, Reuter – The Philippine cabinet resigned on Wednesday, giving President Corazon Aquino…
Cabinet Reshuffle Seen as Last Chance for Aquino as Confidence Wanes
10 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 10 – Philippine President Corazon Aquino has been given a final chance to…
Likely Choices Seen for New Manila Economic Chiefs
16 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 16 – A veteran development banker and the former head of one of…
Aquino Drops Close Aides to End Government Purge
17 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 17, Reuter – Philippine President Corazon Aquino, under pressure from a disgruntled military,…
Manila Shake-up Will Restore Investor Confidence Minister
18 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 18, Reuter – President Corazon Aquino’s shake-up of top posts in her government…
Philippine’s SAN Maguel Predicts Bullish Year
22 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 22 – Philippine food and beverage giant San Miguel is doing “magnificently well”…
Two to Tango
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Breakout Companies
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Debt Repayment Ceiling Seen Hurting Philippines
24 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 24 – Any ceiling on debt repayments imposed by the Philippines would cut…
India’s Most Valuable Companies
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Philippines Poised for Risky debt showdown
28 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 28 – The Philippines is poised for a risky showdown with its…
Philippine Debt Accord Hangs in Balance
25 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 25 – The Philippines’ recent debt restructuring hangs in the balance after a…
The Best Companies to Work for
At Business Today we write about companies all the time. Often, it is a top-down view. We meet the Chief Executive Officer, the senior members…
Human Rights a Thorny issue in Asia Despite Official Silence
30 September 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Sept 30, Reuter – Charges of widespread human rights violations in Asia met silence…
Land Reform, debt action gather pace in Philippine Congress
1 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 1, Reuter – The Philippine Congress on Thursday pushed forward an ambitious program…
Not Measuring Up
Exactly two years ago we ran a cover story on India’s skills crisis. This was just after Subramanian Ramadorai was named Adviser to the Prime…
Philippines Senate Bill Proposes Debt Commission
1 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 1 – Members of the Philippine Congress want to set up a commission…
Turning Turtle
In 1908, when Henry Ford began making his revolutionary Model Ts on an assembly line in Detroit, there were 241 carmakers in the United States.…
Cheat Funds
Sometimes India’s economy resembles a rambunctious teenager brought up short by a finger-wagging headmaster. Our finance minister can now recite with his eyes closed a…
Growing Labour Militancy Adds to Philippines’ woes
2 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 2, Reuter – The number of strikes in the Philippines is down this…
Philippine PESO falls to record low
8 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 8 – The Philippine peso plunged to a record low of 20.850 against…
India’s Best CFOs
Business Today’s team of reporters was putting finishing touches to the BT-YES Bank Best CFO Survey starting on page 57. The 14 men and one…
Manila’s hot money flows from stocks to dollars
12 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 12 – Short-term speculators have switched their attention from Manila’s once bullish stock markets…
Philippine PESO Falters as speculators snap up dollars
13 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 13, Reuter – The Philippine peso has been battered over the past month…
Anti-strike Force Planned, Labour Minister says
14 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 14, Reuter – The Philippine government is considering setting up a special police…
Ready For Battle
I remember sticking an aluminium one-yen coin and a copper one-US-cent coin to my computer screen in Tokyo around the mid-1990s and watching in fascination…
Manila Futures Exchange Plans new Contracts
14 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 14 – The Manila International Futures Exchange Inc (MIFE) hopes to start trading…
The Luxury Issue
Looking down at my bowl of gazpacho at dinner one recent night. I realised that I do not own a single moustache spoon, with guards,…
Aquino Faces Uphill Task in Economic Recovery
19 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 19, Reuter – Philippine President Corazon Aquino can expect a volley of anxious…
Manila Races to Finalise Pivotal Debt Case
22 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 22 – The Philippine Central Bank and creditors of a private fertiliser firm…
Philippines Revises debt/equity program
22 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 22 – The Philippine government has made major changes in its debt-to-equity conversion…
Missing Murthy
Within the space of a week, I met N.R. Narayana Murthy for a long and friendly conversation at his airy venture-capital office in Bangalore’s Jayanagar…
Three Americans and Filipino shot dead near US Base
28 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 28, Reuter – Gunmen shot dead three Americans, including two airmen, and a…
U.S. Diplomat’s recall marks new low in ties with Philippines
28 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 28, Reuter – The recall of a U.S. military diplomat from the Philippines…
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…
US Defuses meddling row by pulling out attache from Manila
28 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 28, Reuter – The United States said on Wednesday it was withdrawing a…
Philippine hit-squad killings signal new communist offensive
29 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 29, Reuter – Philippine Communist guerrillas appear to have launched a major offensive…
Broken IIT
Many, many moons ago, I used to visit a cousin pursuing his B.Tech. programme at IIT Madras. The campus was beautiful; of an early Sunday…
Manila Resolves row over planters products INC’s debt ahead of deadline
30 October 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Oct 30 – The Philippine government and creditors of a private fertiliser firm have…
Philippine Customs Chief says no graft, yes to ‘rewards’
4 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 4, Reuter – The new customs chief of the Philippines says he frowns…
ASCOPE MEETING
5 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 5 – The heads of national oil companies of the Association of Southeast…
India’s Coolest Start-Ups
The US Congress stepped back just in time from the fiscal cliff, but Indian sensibilities about the Delhi gang rape and killing fell off another cliff…
Philippines Worried About Commodity Prices
9 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 9 – Any fall in commodity prices resulting from the crash in world…
Doubts run high as Manila recovery Flattens Out
11 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 11 – Near the end of her second year in office, Philippine…
Philippine Trade Gap Wider Than Earlier Reported
19 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 19 – National Statistics Office (NSO) figures show the Philippines’ trade deficit stood…
Philippine Debt Accord Again in Jeopardy
20 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 20 – The Philippines’ restructuring of 13.2 billion dollars of foreign debt has…
India’s Best CEOs
We are waiting to exhale. Food prices fell in the last fortnight of December, for the first time in six years, and headline inflation is…
Philippines to Borrow Sugar From Thailand to meet sudden rise in Demand
20 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 20 – The Philippines will borrow between 30,000 and 100,000 tonnes of…
Watch Your Step
Three economists are gazing at a glass half full of water. The optimist sees a glass half full. The pessimist sees a glass half empty.…
Philippines Central Bank Curbs Dollar Trading
24 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 24 – The Philippines has moved to defend its foreign exchange reserves by…
Philippine Military Details Foreign Aid for Communist Rebels
24 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 24, Reuter – Private groups in Australia and West Europe are supplying Philippine…
How I Did it
Companies and human beings are surprisingly similar. Over a long period of time we build an intricate geodesic dome of habits, rules. principles, emotions, likes…
PHILIPPINES EXPECTS MINIMAL U.S. SUGAR QUOTA CUT
25 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 25 – The Philippines has been warned that the United States is planning…
ENVOY SAYS COMMUNIST ATTACKS WILL BOOST U.S.- PHILIPPINE TIES
25 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 25, Reuter – The communist rebel killings of three Americans near a U.S.…
The Best Companies to Work For
It was a bracing week: I started and ended it with conversations with honest men whose cleanliness shone through. Both had had something to do…
361 DEAD AS TYPHOON CUTS TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION IN PHILIPPINES
27 November 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Nov 27, Reuter – Rescue workers battled through floods in the central Philippines on…
MANILA RATES RISE AS PRESSURE GROWS ON PESO
1 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 1 – Short-term interest rates have shot up in the Philippines as the…
FORMER PHILIPPINE FINANCE CHIEF’S DEATH BELIEVED SUICIDE
7 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 7, Reuter – Former Philippine finance minister Jaime Ongpin was found with a…
MANILA TO PUSH AHEAD WITH FISCAL REFORMS
11 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 11 – The Philippine government intends to boost tax collection, reorder its expenditures,…
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…
MUCH RHETORIC, FEW GAINS IN ASEAN COOPERATION.
13 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 13 – South-east Asian leaders gather in Manila this week to try to…
ASEAN MOVES TO BOOST REGIONAL ECONOMIC COOPERATION
14 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 14, Reuter – Spurred by shrinking markets and the spectre of global recession,…
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…
ASEAN DEPLORES PROTECTIONISM, URGES DEBT SOLUTION
14 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 14 – The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) criticised rising protectionism,…
ASEAN MUST GIRD TO MEET REGIONAL CHALLENGES, MAHATHIR SAYS
14 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 14, Reuter – South-East Asia’s non-communist countries must gird to meet challenges posed…
JAPAN-ASEAN TRADE, INVESTMENT DECLINING
15 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 15 – Japan’s trade and overseas investment with South-East Asia, which accounts for…
India’s Best CFOs: Tips From The Finest Financial Brains
I have a confession to make. Many moons ago, I studied to be an accountant and despite one of the world’s toughest entry barriers with…
TAKESHITA PLEDGES TO OPEN MARKETS TO ASEAN
15 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 15 – Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita marked his first foreign trip by…
ASEAN SUMMIT CLOSES WITH ECONOMIC EMPHASIS
15 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 15, Reuter-South-East Asia’s leaders cemented their alliance on Tuesday, ending a summit meeting with…
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The word “flurry” is used to describe a sudden blast or gust, or a sudden commotion, and it. has been used frequently to label the…
U.S. SUGAR QUOTA CUT WORSE THAN THOUGHT – MANILA
16 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 16 – A 23 pct cut in the 1988 U.S. sugar import quota…
How Samsung Moved Nokia’s Cheese
Competition is fierce and kicking in India, not least between business magazines. Which is why we love being flies on the wall as we watch…
Are Indian CEOs Overpaid?
The day before this issue of Business Today hits news stands, America will vote for a new president. The day after you invest less than…
TAKESHITA PROMISES TO SPEED AID TO PHILIPPINES
16 December 1987 Reuters News English (c) 1987 Reuters Limited MANILA, Dec 16 – Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita promised President Corazon Aquino he would…
INDIA : Return To Normalcy
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s dramatic announcement on January 18 that the Emergency in India is being relaxed and that elections to the Lok Sabha will…
The Big Squeeze
Turkmenistan’s “President for Life” Saparmurat Niyazov erected a 50-ft gold-plated statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat, eight years before he gave…
Deal Chahta Hai
A laughter club in Mumbai is forced to “zip it” because a humourless neighbour is disturbed, not long after a 63-year-old cartoon unleashes a cleansing…
Deconstructing HCC
The deeper we sail into the economic doldrums, the greater is the wonderment that there is so much locked-up promise in India that we cussedly…
Low On Gas
There are times when we at Business Today chafe at being a fortnightly. There is so much happening in business and the economy that we…
MRS GANDHI Vs. THE CHALLENGERS
Speaking about the 1971 elections to a Newsweek correspondent, Mrs Indira Gandhi had said: “I am the real issue in this election.” In 1977, too,…
The Best Advice I ever Got
When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be …
Most Powerful Women
Our Prime Minister can seem like an accidental politician. Speaking publicly, he comes across as earnestly wooden, and when he addressed the nation on September…
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…
How TCS Toppled RIL
What a fortnight it has been. We have plumbed new depths in animus and acrimony. Not a day goes by without a shrieking melee, either…
THE NEW DEAL IN NEW DELHI
There had been many signs of the anti-Congress wind in the final days of the 1977 election campaign, but its magnitude amazed the canniest political…
Pulling Punches
Why did god create stock-market analysts? To make weather forecasters look good, runs the rather puerile joke. But seriously, company analysis is an earnest business-in…
Pain: A Triple Whammy in 2012 Flat Income, High Prices & Shrinking Wealth
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is…
IT’S THE ELECTION, STUPID
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while…
Anniversary Issue 30th Momentous Years
Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the struggle within “We are all like a family and there is bound to be dissent in a democratic party.” The…
Prem Ji Is Back
By the time this issue of Business Today hits the news stands, voting for new governments in three Indian states will be completed. The seven-…
India’s Best Banks
Pity the modern banker, who is described in one of the stories in this issue as “pin-striped”. In India, of course, some of the most…
India’s Most Valuable Companies
If you look down from a helicopter at any of India’s teeming cities you will see millions of people scurrying around using every known form…
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…
This Time For Africa
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was a creature with a bull’s head and a man’s body who dwelt at the centre of the Cretan maze…
India’s Coolest Start-Ups
Some things were on a fast track as the heat dragged us into the dog days of June, and some were on a slow track.…
India’s Best CFOs
I once knew a Chief Financial Officer who took a course in “Interpersonal skills. Asked why he needed to learn to get along better with…
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…
Budget Deficit
I remember when I was a child eating the only canned peas available then. They were hard, bland and left a metallic taste in my…
India Slowing
It seems churlish to sound a pessimistic note about India’s economy when a large contingent of our business and political leaders is hard at work…
New Business Families
“If a thousand suns were to rise in the heavens at the same time, the blaze of their light would resemble a little the supreme…
India’s Hottest Young Executives
Sssssay now … what we have we here?” hisses Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book, smacking his lips over Mowgli. “Jusssst you wait till…
Hindustan Unilever Is Working Up A Lather
“Chamko… kapdon ke liye behtereen sabun. Bar-bar, lagatar. Chamko. Kapdon mein chakachaundh chamak lane ke liye. Khushbudar, jhaagwala-Chamko.” Romance blooms when charming salesgirl Deepti Naval…
The haze before dawn
Do you know what a “dominant undertaking” is Suresh Krishna does. The Chairman and Managing Director of Sundram Fasteners lived every day with the provisions…
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…
Buy Me, Buy Me Not
Stock markets and their behavior are an inexact science. Technical analysts will study head and shoulders patterns, Fibonacci retracements, stochastic oscillators and sundry chicken entrails…
The Best Companies To Work For
Know one’s onions” means to know one’s subject well. But do we really know why our economy fares as it does, how supply and demand…
India’s Skilling Field
“Then we had to find the rule and the string again, and a new hole was made; and, about midnight, the picture would be up…
Are We Disaster Ready?
When I lived in Tokyo in the early 1990s, children at my daughter’s school could clamber into an “earthquake truck” for a foretaste of what…
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…
Going Nowhere
I remember my first car with great fondness. It was a Fiat 1100D, and I crashed it barely a month after my wife and I…
The New GE Way
Jeff Immelt stepped into Jack Welch’s shoes four days before 9/11. Even more than the legendary Welch, he has GE blood in his veins –…
The Most Powerful Women In Indian Business
Early this month I travelled to Agra to walk barefoot around the Taj Mahal, the only wonder of the world that stands in honour of…
India’s Best Banks
Just as we were putting this special issue of Business Today to bed. Thomas M. Hoenig. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City,…
Mayday- AT THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
Senior Editor of this newspaper were about to sit down for their evening news-planning meeting when the smoke alarms started jangling. Within moments the first…
Home Truths
And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That…
India’s Best Fund Manager
Have you heard the story about Warren Buffett, the 215 millionaires, and the coin-flipping orangutans? It takes some telling and you will have to buy…
When we invented the weekend newspaper
Hindustan Times on Saturday was launched on June 3 last year. It was a unique product and an unqualified success. Unique, because no other newspaper…
Brats at Work
H for Hitler. A for arrogant, R for rascal, I for idiot …” I’m sure many of us remember the “Hari Sadu” commercial about the…
Gender Gag
Sexual harassment can be crude and overt or very subtle, but you know you are being sexually harassed when you experience it. Those around you…
India’s Most Valuable Companies
Nothing matches the rush of blood to the brain when you read super-sized success stories. Nothing tells the story of the Milky Way of densely-packed…
Pester Power
Remember when mall meant a tree-shaded promenade in Shimla or one of those picturesque cantonment towns, and plastic was when your grandmother graduated from tin…
Low Cost Rules
You won’t get the lounges with pile carpeting, deep sofas, canapés and laptop docks. You don’t have the noise and to-do of Mamatadi’s Duronto non-stop…
Betting on Farms
India is a land of plenty. It is also a land of plenty of waste. If you suffer Malthusian nightmares of the Great Unfed Billions,…
Hello, Tomorrow
I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…
Arriving in the 21st century
I Experienced my epiphany about consumer media a couple of years ago on a Tokyo subway When I lived in Japan in the mid- 1990s,…
India’s Best B-School
A professional suitable match for a beautiful, slim MBA Punjabi girl… Boy to be MBA, Engineer, CA.” Not too long ago, in the matrimonial ads…
New Age Guru peps up India story believers
“When you were five years old, you were happy nearly all the time. Somebody had to make you unhappy Now you are 30-plus and have…
Do Not Miss trade Bus to India, PM tells S Africa
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a group of senior Indian and South African businessmen on Monday that he was confident India can accelerate economic growth…
SA lends India N-hand
Pretoria gets New Delhi’s support for Security Council seat The Leader of India and South Africa made a strategic trade off on Monday India decisively…
THE NORTH-EAST- 40TH ANIVERSARY
The guns are yet to fall silent in the North-east but in places where development has made an inroad, peace has prevailed. Only by bringing…
BAHUGUNA’S BLITZ
If Politics is the art of deception, the Congress(I) symbolises its highly developed state. After crying itself hoarse about its inability to conduct the Garhwal …
STC-Anatomy of A strike
Inscrutable are the ways of public-sector trade unions. The Federation of the State Trading Corporation Employees’ Unions (FSTCEU) lived up to this image when it…
THE SCINDIAS-The Battle Royal
It Began as a small tiff, as all battles do. The two antagonists identities lent it a delicious irony: Vijaya Raje Scindia, the ex-Rajmata of…
MADHYA PRADESH-Of Inhuman Bondage
Visually, the scene was vintage Bergman. A low canopy of sullen clouds scudded over a landscape whipped by icy winds. Despair seemed to be wrung…
RESERVE BANK-Money to Burn
Of all the functions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there is one routine task crucial to the health of the economy: incinerating the…
DELHI UNIVERSITY-NOTES OF DISCORD
Delhi University is one of the few in the country to possess a full-fledged faculty of music. But for years now, the Music Department has…
BIHAR PRESS BILL-BATTLE CRY
Whatever else the government is butter-fingered at doing, it is adept at keeping the results of its impetuosity in a state of continuing suspense’. The…
SCHOLARSHIPS- Political Compulsions
Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were informed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their applications for…
TYRE PRICES – Vastly Over-Inflated
Tyres are one essential commodity over which the Government seems to exert no control whatsoever. In the last six months prices have risen twice. And…
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…
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…
Signs Of The Times
There was the baby-faced ex-pilot, all thumbs as he handled the controls in his political flight simulator; the rough-spun son of the, soil, a man…
SPOIL OF SYCOPHANCY
For all those journalists who think they belong to a thankless and poorly-paid profession, there is hope on the horizon. It comes from the latest…
DESERTS – GREENING OF THAR
Lush vegetation in the Thar? Groves jamun trees? Mighty rivers the size of the Ganga and Indus? Seasons of monsoon-like rainfall? None of this is…
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…
The Opposition-The Games Old Men Play
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
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…
LALDENGA’S WAR-DANCE
Events In Mizoram seems to be moving Inexorably towards a resumption of Insurgency The cease-fire agreement, which came into effect at midnight on July 31…
EXCISE DUTY-MORE SLAPS THAN SOPS
PRANAB MUKHERJEE’s first budget, at first glance so redolent of status quo, is peppered with little booby traps. Two paragraphs in his speech have caused…
NOT SELLING VOLUMES
It was a browser’s dream come true kilometres of books that took hold of the bibliophile’s heart-strings and did not stop tugging for hours. For…
ITC-HAKSAR’S LAST HURRAH
Sentimentality rarely intrudes in to shareholders’ meetings, but this one was different. Over 3,000 had gathered in the incongruous setting of a Calcutta cathedral compound…
GUJRAT-HURRICANE HAVOC
It was a visitation of grief and destruction, a cruel twist to the suffering Gujarat was already shrouded in. Meteorologists first noticed the brewing cyclone…
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…
FRIEND IN NEED
The Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS) is everybody’s favourite bugbear. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would be accused of having a hand in the…
A BATTLE SUPREME
Titled Judiciary: Attacks and Survival, the speech had been long in coming, the speaker delayed, first by an attack of diabetes in March and then…
From Flood To Trickle
Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers-last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital’s citizens…
MATHEMATICS OF RAGAS
When Frenchman Bernard Bel and American Jim Arnold met by chance in a Delhi hotel in September 1979, it turned out to be a momentous…
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,…
LABOUR – MAKING A POINT
RARELY had an event invited such determined and concerted action by Union Government: When the 24-hour national strike called by the National Campaign Committee (NCC)…
MYSTERIOUS U-TURN
Although it is a blasphemous thought, it has cropped up in many a legal mind during the last few weeks: if bets were placed on…
POLITICAL COMPLUSIONS
Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were informed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their applications for…
THE ART OF SURVIVAL
Deep inside the jungle in northernmost Mizoram, a lone man brews a tin mug of tea in the early morning haze. He is squatting on…
PRISONERS- FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE
The salaried middle classes have time and again fallen prey to the Government’s more capricious economic decisions. But, one group that has suffered the most…
JAGANNATH MISHRA-CLEARED BY THE COURT
HE INDIA-RUBBER man, Jagannath Mishra, had done it again. For months, the Bihar chief minister’s political fate had hung in the balance while the Supreme…
Cheating The Hangman
Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…
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…
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…
UTTAR PRADESH – PEACE OF THE GRAVEYARD
I know no one can do me no harm because happiness is a warm gun. Yes it is. Vishwanath Pratap Singh had cause to be…
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,…
THE WEAGES OF WRATH
ON January 18 the strike by 2.5 lakh textile workers in Bombay’s 60 mills will complete a year; 25,000 of these workers in eight mills…
ENDS OF JUSTICE
Gauhati and Jorhat and small batches people took out processions in protest against the decision to hold the elections. Even political parties opposed to the…
PASSING THE BUCK
Nearly two months after a shocked Parliament was rocked by the Nellie and Gohpur massacres and the bloodbath that had drenched Assam during February’s’ election…
Suppressing Dissent?
EVERY dissenter is in a minority of one, and K. Ashok Rao, 36, deputy manager in Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), is discovering what it…
HANGING FIRE
The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…
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…
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…
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.…
The Enemy Within
Iran’s much-vaunted Islamic revolution appears to have finally spilled over into India. Chanting Allah-o-Akbar and wielding primitive weapons like lathis bristling with nails, bicycle chains,…
SHARING LOSSES
Last week-end the seesaw battle being waged by Swraj Paul to take over Escorts and DCM slowed to a less suspenseful motion when the London-based…
THE TIGHTENING NOOSE
On Summer nights all over north India. people put out hundreds of thousands of cots in the open air to sleep on Most of the…
MONSOON BLUES
There are times when India looks invincible, bursting with food stocks and blessed with a government that is gungho about its workability. But the rain…
AN UNCERTAIN LULL
SHEIKH Mohammad Abdullah’s health more than anything else has been responsible for the sudden thaw in Delhi-Srinagar relations For a while last month Kashmir teetered…
MIRAGE IN THE DESERT
Within a few years from now, the westernmost and thirstiest fringe of Rajasthan, along the Indo-Pakistani border, is going to be brought to life by…
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…
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…
POWER PROBLEM
September 1981 to go into the question of revising the rates of forest produce. The eight-member committee, chaired by the chief secretary, consisted of the…
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi Lal reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
SNAG IN THE ROPE
Anticlimax has become the boon companion of the Supreme Court. When the court reopened on July 18 after its summer vacation, it was shadowed by…
THE TAMIL TRAGEDY
The 35-km ride from Katunayake International Airport into Colombo in a slow Mitsubishi coach I driven by a nervous Sinhala I is enveloped in silence.…
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…
THE AFTERMATH
GANESHA’S temple had never seen so many supplicants, all with unanswerable prayers Colombo’s Tamils call it Pillaiyar Kovil, and its ornamented gateway on Galle Road…
FOR WHOM THE BILL TOLLS
One of the misconceptions spawned by the Bihar Press Bill is that it will emasculate Bihar’s journalists. The truth is that Bihar’s journalists have already…
Marching To Discovery
In the coolness of the early morning there is little traffic on National Highway 3. Outward bound from Nasik, the tar stretches infinitely in mottled…
FIREFILES CAUGHT IN A LOGJAM
Without second-generation reforms and a drastic overhaul of its institutions, India is condemned to mediocre income and growth. As befits an ancient land, India is…
THIS YEAR WE WILL FALL SHORT OF THE TARGET
It has been two years since you took charge. How are you tackling the skilling challenge? The scale of the problem is huge. A combination…
Uncertainty Principle
A disgraced Ranbaxy has a long and expensive journey ahead before it regains the trust of global and Indian customers. By E. Kumar Sharma and…
Trouble Brewing
Gurdeep Singh Chadha – “Ponty” to those who nod at or fear him – is not an easy man to know. Many say the tax…
WE LOST THE PLOT
Kishore Biyani reveals why he sold a controlling stake in his flagship Pantaloons stores to the Aditya Birla Group in a candid conversation with Chaitanya…
HOW TO DO A MANAGEMENT BUYOUT AT 30,000 FEET
The next time you are flying somewhere, do not bury your nose in a book or plug in your earphones. Take a good look around.…
A LONE PRIME MINISTER IN A NATION OF PRESIDENT
Quit moaning and hear the good news, folks! India is going to be the world’s largest beef exporter in 2012, beating out Australia and Brazil…
Interview: Osamu Suzuki
MARUTI WILL NOT END Simmering unrest among contract workers at the Manesar (Haryana) plant of Maruti Suzuki exploded in violence and arson on July 18;…
Interview: Upendra Kumar
“There are companies which are defying the law…. We have taken a series of measures.” In the 20 months he has been Chairman of the…
CEO COMPANSATION
SWIMMING IN IT Until July 1991, directors at Indian companies could not be paid more than ₹15,000 a month. Commissions as a percentage of net…
Interview: Robert Zagha
Roberto Zagha has been the World Bank’s Country Director in India since January 2009, when the economy was reeling from the global financial crisis and…
Interview: Anil Agarwal
“Everybody is going to die, but I am going to die last.” He started out as a scrap trader in Patna. Today, with a personal…
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…
When I’m sixty-four
When I’m sixty-four Give me your answer, fill in a form Mine for evermore Will you still need me Will you still feed me When…
“WASHINGTON IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE DELHI”
An erudite scholar, acclaimed author, and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, British historian Niall Ferguson wears several hats.…
WHO WILL CAST THE FIRST STONE?
The Jan Lokpal Bill may need to move from idealism to realism; the solution may also lie in granting independence and teeth to existing agencies…
“WE WERE LEADER BUT WE WERE NOT LEADING”
HUL contributes just 6.3 per cent to Unilever’s global revenues. Where does India stand among emerging markets? Manwani: Emerging markets are not just important; they…
INTERVIEW Y.C. Deveshwar
YOGESH CHANDER DEVESHWAR has been with ITC for nearly 43 years. The past 15 years as chairman and chief executive. Having turned ITC into a…
Lemmings or Llamas?
The US is on life support, and Asian creditors led by China, which holds $1.16 trillion of US treasuries, control the intravenous drip. Asian central…
“ India a $10 Billion Market In five Years “
On the US economy Things are getting better in the United States. It’s a slow recovery, and some of that is based on how steep…
Lean on Me
The US economy needs India more than ever, says Chaitanya Kalbag. Barack Obama had barely walked out of Parliament’s Central Hall when the debate began…
Most Powerful Women in Business
“In India, I See a Lot More Acceptance of Gender in the Workplace” Do you think the India-US CEO Forum you are a member of…
Scrabbling Away From the Abyss
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and…
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…
OUT, DAMNED FOREIGNER
What will India do with 1.9 million illegal immigrants in Assam? The publication of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam on August…
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…
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.…
BANK THE RESERVE
The Reserve Bank Of INDIA (RBI) IS the best-run company in India: transparent, diligent, accountable, and (ostensibly) independent. Its official capital is a paltry Rs…
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 2.11 trillion ($32.5 billion) package announced on October 24 to recapitalise public-sector banks (PSBs);…
SHOW ME THE JOBS
The government is striving mightily, but the needle is moving inexorably lower on the jobs meter. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the…
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…
CLEFT STICK
When Aung san suu kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, two years after the Dalai Lama and two years before Nelson Mandela, she…
ENOUGH ALREADY
I wish the government would stop trying to defend demonetisation. Every time there is bad economic news, the government jumps up to proclaim that demonetisation…
HINDI-CHINI BUY BUY
Sushma swaraj said it simply in parliament in early August when she ruled out war with China over the Doklam plateau: “China has contributed to…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
CLEANING UP OUR ACT( India is trying to do its bit on climate change )
At the Hamburg group of 20 summit on 7-8 July, diplomats toiled through most of the night over US intransigence on climate change before they…
A FIRST-RATE PROBLEM
India’s economy is lurching like a car with two flat rear tyres. The monsoon has been better than expected: a bumper kharif crop is expected,…
CLOSE,, BUT NO CIGAR
Finance Ministers take on a certain air when they think things are going swimmingly and nothing can rock the economy when it is cruising along.…
FINGER ON THE PULES?
Two-thirds of Indians depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As our farm crisis deepens, the government is tinkering around the edges by pushing irrigation, rural…
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,…
KEEP THE BALLAST
Narendera Modi’s first term in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two governors of the Reserve Bank of India. The bad blood between…
DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARNESS
The Washington post adopted this four-word slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in February 2017, its first in 140 years. It was used by its owner…
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…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…
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…
Identify Yourself
The Fates Of the four million people whose names did not appear in the ‘complete draft’ of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam…
ONE NATION, 173 M VOTERS
To be precise, 173,213,635 Voters aged 21 years or above. That was the total on the electoral rolls published, constituency by constituency, between the first…
FUTURE TENSE
So let’s see: 2018 is supposed to be a good year for India. We have low inflation, the monsoon may be normal, manufacturing is finally…
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…
LOSER TAKE ALL
The wise ones among us are all ganit shastris(Mathematicians) and love crunching our election results which seem more frequent than our economic indicators. Politics is…
TELLING NUMBERS
Look Carefully at all the Headlines, screaming or otherwise, that are popping up these days about corruption. How many of them feature women? Study after…
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…
The Dog’s tail
There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you can never straighten a dog’s tail (kutte ki poonch…).…
ELEVENTH HOUR
In India If you Book a Plumber to come And Rescue You from a flooded bathroom, chances are you will get a call at 11…
Jaat Kahan Ho
It is Useful to remind ourselves about how infinitesimal we are in the cosmic order. As we methodically destroy our planet, it is unlikely we…
Clutching At Straws
We are so frozen in the headlights of the on rushing slowdown that even a flicker leads us to believe that we have seen friendly…
Over the Moon
Fifty years later, I vividly remember the grainy black-and-white television images of the giant gantries falling away like a spurned embrace as the giant Saturn…
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…
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…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress seem to have finally woken up to the looming catastrophe of air pollution…
DEMOCRACY ON DISPLAY
The number are numbing About 900 million Indians will be eligible to vote in this general election, and as The Hindu noted, this is more…
VULTURE CULTURE
PSYCHOPATHY. VOYEURISM. SADISM. Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to describe the human tendency to find a strange satisfaction, indeed fulfilment,…
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…
Hell For Leather
Hell for leather means to run very fast, but the leather industry in and around Kanpur has nowhere to run. Hundreds of tanneries and manufacturing…