Passionate About India

Imagine the worth of the 70 Taliban fighters that Pakistan is claiming to have killed in its latest, but disputatiously reluctant assault over the ever expanding and over ambitious Taliban. Well, hold your breath – it’s an incredible US$1billion! Yes, that’s the amount that the US government has gratifyingly pledged to give Pakistan for carrying out its indolent military operations against the Taliban, which was within touching distance of Pakistani nuclear establishments. While Pakistan is too happy to oblige the US dictums for the bait of $1 billion, what is completely getting ignored is the fact that this operation in the districts of Buner, Swat and Dir is nowhere near to routing the Taliban. And yet, Pakistan gets the money! During the Bush regime, Pakistan had to embrace the American war against terror in the post 9/11 era and had to perfunctorily fight those very rogue elements which it had incubated, nurtured and nourished over decades. In return to this so called ‘favour’ that...

you are receptive to change and don’t stick to irrational logic just for the heck of it! Prior to this editorial, I’ve written a couple of more editorials on the American President, Barack Obama. In those editorials, I have been extremely appreciative with respect to his historic win; and more than anything else, with his win that had actually made the American citizen the real winner. I had also been extremely candid with my appreciation towards him, not just for him becoming the President but the arousing reasons that made him so. For the uninitiated, I wrote that he demanded change from his fellow Americans, not simply with respect to the economic outlook or foreign policy, but in something graver; he beseeched them to realise that in the hardships of today should not be forgotten the intensity of the American character of past. This is not to miss how enamoured I was with his outstanding speeches. But then, that’s history now as President Obama is already a few months old in the Wh...

Yes! Indeed the western recession is really the beginning of good news for India! But to understand that, I’ve to take you away from the topic of western recession for a while... to the Japanese recession! For years, I’ve admired the Japanese style of management as a management teacher and given its examples in scores of my workshops. However, over the last one decade or so, I’ve been continuously facing one key question from my workshop participants – mostly CEOs from top corporations of India Incorporated. Their question to me invariably has been, ‘If the Japanese management style is as wonderful as described, then why has Japan been in a recession for the last decade and more?’ This question is what I guess one needs to understand first, if one has to really understand the beauty of the current western recession. My answer to this question has always been very simple. I believe culture plays a very important part in shaping up economies. What succeeds in one culture fails somewhere ...

I often welcome a hearty laugh when I watch news on television or read newspapers; because what I see and read is usually so exasperatingly infuriating and depressing that anger and frustration simply overwhelm me. So I had a hearty chuckle the other day when I found out that Sadhu Yadav – the brother-in-law of Lalu Prasad Yadav – will be a Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha elections. That, I thought, was delicious irony. I also laughed watching the media cover the manner in which film star Sanjay Dutt was projected and nominated as a Samajwadi Party candidate from Lucknow, a seat that is still held by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. From Vajpayee to Dutt would have been an interesting transition! But then, Sanjay Dutt happens to be a convicted criminal who is also a Bollywood megastar. I have the deepest sympathies for him and his family; but I have always wondered if the Indian judiciary, and the media, were going commodiously soft on him because of his background. I mean, he did allegedly ...