#rajdeepsardesai #straightbatwithrajdeep
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…’ : Charles Dickens in Tale of Two Cities.
The author’s reflections on Britain in the mid nineteenth century now echo in 21st century India, trapped as we are in our own Dickensian moment. If 2020 was the year of doom and gloom, 2021 is where hope alternates with despair in surreal discomfort. Early year optimism that the worst was over has descended into deepening concerns over a ‘second’ Corona wave.
#rajdeepsardesai #straightbatwithrajdeep
This is election season in India and I want to raise a contentious issue by posing a simple direct question: is the Election Commission a neutral umpire or is it the 12th man for the party in power? This is an issue that might raise hackles: am I casting aspersions on the independence and autonomy of the commission. Well, yes and no. No, I have great respect for the institution of the election commission but Yes, I intend to question whether the commission has been de-fanged in recent times and rendered toothless.
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Today’s topic is the mysterious Ambani bomb scare case that has sparked so much controversy. Actually, I would rather call it the Mansukh Hiran case because at the end of the day. The fact is that one unknown businessman’s body was found in the waters of Thane creek, with every indication being that he was strangulated, rendered unconscious and his body dumped into the sea.
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At an India Today media conclave in early 2018, Sonia Gandhi made a rather candid confession: the BJP, she said, had managed to convince many people that the Congress is a ‘Muslim party’. The Congress president’s remarks, in a sense, were a tacit admission that Nehruvian secularism had failed to combat the rising tide of political Hindutva. Her words were also echoing the party’s Antony committee report, drafted in the aftermath of the 2014 election debacle but never made public, that the Congress was seen as ‘pro-Muslim’ and ‘anti-Hindu’. Three years later, as we enter another election season, the Congress’s predicament is even more stark: the party’s secular identity is once again being questioned as it is accused of openly aligning with ‘Muslim’ parties.
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I am a 70s kid, or like to at least believe I am one. The 70s were India and Indira Gandhi’s decade of socialism and the emergency, which meant that we had to learn to live with both state power and economic scarcity. We didn’t have 24 x7 breaking news thankfully: it was the age of black and white tv and Doordarshan, of Chaya Geet on Thursdays, Phool Khile Hai Gulshan Gulshan with the ever smiling Tabassum on Fridays and a much awaited old Hindi movie on Sundays.
#rajdeepsardesai #straightbatwithrajdeep This week, the world’s largest cricket stadium was inaugurated in Ahmedabad; this week, India won a test match inside two days. Yet, the headline controversy was not over what happened on the pitch but off it: the decision to name the stadium as the Narendra Modi stadium has sparked off much debate, primarily led by the opposition which saw this as an example of personal legacy building and classic narcissism. Well, its time to separate the noise from the news and tell it like it is.
#rajdeepsardesai #straightbatwithrajdeep
This has been a week where our cricketers have grabbed the headlines by comprehensively winning a test match against England and then being sold at astronomical prices in the IPL auction. And yet, this is a week that should leave any true cricket fan who looks at sport as a bridge builder in society rather depressed. I certainly am. Let me tell you why.
