Passionate About India

Many people have been moved by Jaswant Singh’s genuine tears of pain, L.K Advani’s hurt pride and Murli Manohar Joshi’s sadness at the BJP Central Committee not blindly agreeing to give them the seats they wanted. Personally and emotionally speaking, I too have been moved by the same. Truly, compared to these BJP stalwarts, how many leaders in the Congress can you point out and say that you respect them? From the younger lot, there are some who are better than the average, but are yet to earn any respect. From the older lot, almost all are people who are impossible to respect. You look at most and feel that you are looking at seasoned scamsters. Compare that to the older BJP generation – from Vajpayee to Advani to Murli Manohar Joshi to Jaswant Singh and even to Yashwant Sinha. They are all people for whom a deep sense of respect comes almost automatically. Not one of them can I look at and think of as a thief. They may not have been revolutionary politicians and may not have given In...

For almost a decade, Dr Manmohan Singh has failed to deliver the goods when it comes to decent economic policy making governed by common sense. Given his background and past experience, this has come as an unpleasant surprise to all Indians. This coming budget is perhaps his last opportunity to stamp his authority and secure his place in history. He can still remain silent; but his policies must do the talking for him “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” “Leadership is about solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded that you do not care. Either is a failure of leadership.” “This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two differe...