Politics
These aren’t the best of times for cricketers turned netas in the sub-continent. In Pakistan,…
We live, to put it mildly, in “interesting times”. This is an age where TV…
The notion of ‘badla’, or revenge, has always had a special place in the Indian imagination: Remember all those Hindi films that centred around the idea of vengeance or settling scores.
In his autobiography, the original Hindi film superstar Dilip Kumar writes of how he got his screen name. It was the Bombay Talkies owner Devika Rani who told him, “Yousuf, I was thinking about your launch as an actor and I felt it would not be a bad idea if you adopted a screen name.
The former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said a week is along time in politics. He was probably wrong.: In India, a weekend is enough as I have realized yet again.
In 2012, we did a television show to identify the greatest Indian after Mahatma Gandhi (post 1947). The winner by some distance was Babasaheb Ambedkar; Jawaharlal Nehru just about made it to the top 10.
a) Modi is a true Pan-Indian leader: the general elections propelled Modi from Gujarat chief minister into India’s neta number one; the state elections have reinforced his stature as a pan-Indian leader.
A Mahabharata is being played out in Maharashtra even before Election Day. For the BJP Shiv Sena alliance, it’s all about kaun banega mukhya mantri. The saffron alliance knows its in pole position to capture power, but wants something more: it wants the kursi of the chief minister.
The BJP is beset with a familiar Indian trait of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Till Narendra Modi came along and used every available opportunity to catapult himself on the national centre stage. And yet, even a Modi-led BJP can commit harakiri.
It is now almost seven months since Delhi hasn’t had an elected government. Arvind Kejriwal’s act of political harakiri in February 2014 pushed the Lieutenant Governor into the spotlight. Under the constitution, the LG has to make every possible effort to see if a government can be formed
