Congress has a supposedly fitting reply to the India Shining campaign of BJP, they now have a website called A Nation Betrayed (website now defunct) which highlights the antonym; though I wonder what took so long to wake them up. Apparently the site is put up by a youth wing of the party indicating that [...]

Asks Charu. Here is what I commented.
If we are talking about a surging stock market, which might be a short-lived and synthetic phenomenon , yes. But going by the same yard-stick was India shining while Harshad Mehta was reigning? India is not shining because our exports have suddenly amassed, but because of the fact [...]

My last post had a quote that represents my long standing apprehension: How will the BJP look minus Atalji? The answer is: very scary. But how has this scary party managed to run a coalition government for 5 years and reach the stage where they could proclaim the “til-gud factor”. The answer is: BJP (read [...]

In this series of posts I will try and include quotes from various sources which match my own views. Here is the first in the series.
Vir Sanghvi quips,
“Vajpayee's stature blinds us to the reality of the BJP. Take him out of the equation and what do you have: a party composed of people who [...]

If you read my post “Living in wonderland” notice the word “backtrack” that I used there. Devoid of spine, politicians have been known, since ages, to create artificial frenzy to fool people: the til-gud1 factor, cute mini-budget full of goodies, all-is-well on Indo-Pak front (aka Hindi-Paki bhai-bhai), Vajpayee is BJPs undisputed leader (backstabbing noise in [...]

I am always surprised by the media-frenzy that builds up even if the stalled vehicle of Indo-Pak talks manages to crawl an inch further and almost all the times backtracks many more inches later. For God's sake judge the scenario with a fair mind. Mian Musharraf will perhaps only risk his life from Islamic hardliners [...]

Jivha thanked Bhutan for its military action against the insurgents including the ULFA outfits. As I commented on his blog, diplomatically we can read more than a “friendly” gesture here. Indian stature for SAARC countries resembles very much the American stature in the UN. India is the “local dada” here, reason why Pakistan is acting [...]

The magic of Ballot has unfolded in Madhya Pradesh. The sansyasin (or sadhwi, whatever) Uma Bharti is destined to become the next Chief Minister of my home-state Madhya Pradesh and the defeated CM Digvijay Singh (incidently called Diggi “Raja”) will take a political Sanyas, if words must be kept. What an irony! The confident-till-yesterday Diggi [...]

The Indian states of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP), NCT of Delhi and Rajasthan are going for assembly polls tomorrow. Funnily, the MP Election commission has specified 16 ways to identify a voter. The list includes Ration card, Student ID card, The IT PAN card, Passprot, Driving license, Blue card for people below poverty line and [...]

Well these are election times and the other day I was wondering whether the political parties are considering email as a medium of canvassing. Today I received a spam from, as it is signed, Narendra Modi the Gujarat CM, as many of you also might have received. The mail has possibly been distributed using private [...]