AAP and the end of Hope
On the day the exit polls for the Delhi municipal elections were predicting a BJP landslide, AAP spokespersons were in a defiant mood, blaming the EVMs for a looming...
Kashmir: putting Indians first
The reality in Kashmir has always been crazily complex: this isn’t some good guys versus bad guys spaghetti western where the guys with the guns are good, those with...
Cow politics: Mahatma’s India vs Bhagwat’s Hindu Rashtra
There are many joys of living in Goa, but its gastronomic pluralism is easily one of the tiny state’s biggest attractions. On the day that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat...
TV news is in a crisis: Chapalgaonkar memorial lecture
Dear friends, members of the Chapalgaonkar family and fellow journalists of Pune, It is a great honour for me to be speaking at the Venkatesh Chapalgaonkar Memorial Lecture here...
When ‘fringe’ becomes Mainstream: Hindu vote bank has arrived
One of the more intriguing narratives being spun after the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the new Uttar Pradesh chief minister is to liken his rise to Narendra Modi....
Thank god for cricket
There must be a world beyond Yogi Adityanath I keep telling myself. For the last week, television has been in a trance with a politician who we once consciously...
The Rise of the Yogi: the Mask is Off
The first time I met Yogi Adityanath was in his bastion of Gorakhpur ahead of the 1999 general elections. It was only the youthful Yogi’s second parliament election and...
Can opposition take on Modi in 2019?
In the aftermath of the 2014 general election debacle, I asked a senior Congressman how his party would now battle the Narendra Modi juggernaut. “Not to worry, we have...
Goa Gone with ‘Money-pur’
So, the BJP is set to form the government in Manipur and Goa, adding two more states to its kitty. In both states the pattern is disturbingly similar: a...
Modi 24 X 7, 365 days
In the final leg of the 2014 general elections, Narendra Modi dramatically announced in a rally, “Yeh dil maange more”. It was a quintessential Modi soundbite: the BJP’s internal...