Lotus could bloom in UP
Predicting the outcome of an Uttar Pradesh election can be injurious to health. In 1993, extensively covering a UP election for the first time, when my editor asked me...
The UP Muslim ‘vote bank’ predicament
The complicated and controversial notion of a Muslim vote bank stretches back to the first general elections in 1952. The post-Partition face of the Indian Muslims, Maulana Azad, was...
Congress will remain a C team player
Five years is an eternity in Indian politics. As Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav beamed beatifically into the cameras last weekend, the mind was thrown back to 2012 when...
It’s now ‘Modi vs All’
The BJP and the Shiv Sena were once seen as ‘natural allies’ but life for the original saffron alliance is not quite the same in the age of Narendra...
Will politics shrink in 2017?
We live, to put it mildly, in “interesting times”. This is an age where TV family serials have given way to political soap operas: Are Akhilesh and Mulayam at...
Has Modi done an Indira?
Last month in an interview I asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi if she would concede that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a similar personality to Indira Gandhi, tough and...
Jayalalithaa: FIlm star politician number one!
As an MP, actor Govinda had one of the worst attendance records in Parliament: He attended less than 10% of the sittings in the Lok Sabha and spoke for...
Demonetisation: Modi risks winning battle, losing war
For those still surprised by prime minister Narendra Modi’s audacious demonetisation gamble, the past maybe a useful guide. In 2007, just ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections, Mr Modi...
Trump, Modi and the liberal media bias.
In the aftermath of Narendra Modi’s victory in the 2012 Gujarat assembly elections, a much-respected writer-activist known for his liberal views had accosted me at a dinner: “I heard...
Tele-democracy, Trump and Modi
The latest opinion polls in the US are suggesting a much tighter race for the country’s presidency but the debate in Washington DC, at least, has slowly shifted from...