In the mid-1970s, just when national disenchantment with the opaque and corrupt polity that Congress-raj had turned into was hitting its peak, Anand Bakshi caught the…
Year: 2010
In November 1947, speaking to the All India Congress Committee on the biggest issue of the time – Hindu-Muslim relations – Mahatma Gandhi told the delegates…
Whatever one’s views about Julian Assange and the damage done to international diplomacy through his mega-anarchist notion of a boundary-less world, the Wikileaks disclosures have done…
In the late 1990s, when Nitish Kumar was still seen as having more influence in Delhi than in Patna, there was a golden rule about Bihar…
Manmohan Singh is too occupied with the telecom scandal at the moment to worry about the shenanigans of Rakhi Sawant and company but perhaps he should,…
Other countries host the G20 as a closed-door confabulation of leaders, wrapped up in a cocoon of water-tight security lest the usual legions of protesters outside…
The nineteenth century Prussian strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz propounded an influential thesis on the dialectics of warfare writing that ‘˜war is politics by another means’.…
The first thing every cadet passing through the hallowed portals of the National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla learns is its motto: ‘˜Service before self’. If the…
Talking about the wrong turn on Rohinton Mistry’s book this week, India’s most irreverent sociologist had this gem to offer: “The quality of Vice-Chancellors in this…
The Games are over, they have been declared a success, our athletes have done us proud and all is well. If you were only reading the…