Passionate About India

A one lakh-rupee car! And that too made in India!! It could have perhaps only come from one house in India – the house of Tatas. Tatas have traditionally been known as people with a different social commitment despite being a business house. While their competitors in the entrepreneur-unfriendly-era of licence raj went ahead with corrupt practices to grow, Tatas sacrificed growth in order to remain clean. The Tata history is replete with examples of patriotism. The famous Taj Mahal Hotel at the Gateway of India in Mumbai being one of the finest examples! The hotel had a sign outside which said, “Dogs and Britishers not allowed,” because many hotels then – and in particular a hotel right behind the Taj – used to have signboards saying, “Dogs and Indians not allowed.” Thus, the people’s car for India had to be from their stable! However, what comes as a surprise is that the car comes under the leadership of Ratan Tata. Though the house, as I just mentioned, has always been known for its ...

Of late, the word ‘affection’ has acquired a new meaning in Uttar Pradesh. The term, which otherwise is used to express qualitative and subjective feelings, has turned hugely quantitative in nature. And interestingly, this change has been spearheaded by none other than the current Chief Minister of the state, Ms Mayawati, whose followers, in a mad frenzy of this affection, had been filling her personal coffers with gifts and donations. The reverence of Bahujan Samaj Party party workers towards her had been so overwhelming that according to reports, in the last three years, her personal wealth has grown almost 50 times! Her personal assets – which in 2004 were around Rs 1.62 crores, a figure she herself had declared before filing her nomination papers – have increased to a whopping Rs 52 crores now! And mind you, she does not have any other source of income except for these gifts! Media reports have put on record that her personal property is worth Rs 37.82 crore, plus cash of Rs 50.27 ...

What a venue they chose to assassinate Benazir Bhutto. At the same venue, in the year 1951, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated. Fifty six years later, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on 27 December 2007, indicating the state of security quagmire Pakistan has been in. The state of affairs is so appalling that the assassins could have terminated her life whenever they had wished. The fact is that the perpetrators had plotted to blow Benazir up targeting the day she had returned to Pakistan. They missed! And after that, within themselves, they must have discussed casually – ‘Well, no issues, we missed today, will try again, next month!’ It is unbelievable how easily they almost killed her once (during the first blast) and then actually killed her in a matter of a few more days. These shocking incidents only indicate the state of security quandary that the South Asian countries face, wherein the killing of top political figures is carried out almost at will...

Narendra Modi could not have asked for a better New Year gift from the people of Gujarat. Gujaratis came forward and wholeheartedly voted for Mr Modi and gave him the mandate to rule the state for the second consecutive term. A feat, which only a handful of Indian leaders have achieved till date. Though Mr Modi won a majority with 117 seats, it seems he was expecting to win around 125 in the 182-member legislature. Irrespective of the numbers, what makes this win big for Modi is the kind of odds he was against, in this election. Most of the experts and established media houses ruled out the possibility of Modi being re-elected, for those who felt Modi would make it again, they forecast a hung outcome or win with a wafer thin margin. Modi has proved all of them wrong. There were two things that worked in his favour in this election. His campaign which started on a shaky ground gained momentum at a later stage, after the historic Freudian slip of ‘merchants of death’ from Congress Presid...

The resounding victory of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in the recently held Duma elections was a sort of a referendum for Putin and his style of functioning for the last eight years. Putin, undoubtedly, has emerged a victor. His anointment of Dmitri Medvedev as the new Presidential candidate in next year’s elections also makes sure that the legacy of Putin and his policies are here to stay. This might be good news for Russia – and many of its allies – but certainly not for the US. With the disintegration of USSR in 1990s and the subsequent end to the Cold War, the world had gone through a dichotomy of feelings – relief on one hand, and paranoia on the other. Relief, because the end of the Cold War meant a virtual annihilation of a possible nuclear clash between the two giants (US and USSR). The sense of paranoia however persisted as the end of Cold War also meant that the world became unipolar with the US emerging as the sole superpower and entering into prolonged of war-monger...

Forbes billionaires’ list featured the names of 36 Indian businessmen, with an accumulated worth of a staggering USD 191 billion (that is, almost 20% of what the entire Indian population earned for the same year). In fact, of these 36, three of the names also appeared in the top 20 of the global rich! The only other economy that outscored India was the United States of America with five billionaires. In fact, India is the only Asian economy to have so many billionaires in that list; and next to it is Japan with 24!! While the Indian media – mainly consisting of half /ill educated people and middlemen with negligible intelligence and analytical skills – go ga ga over the same, and the masses get carried away with excitement, taking it to be an achievement, it’s time to reveal some gruesome truth about our billionaire industrialists. After Independence, our industrialists were given a monopolistic market to operate upon, thanks to the bureaucratic system of bribery-driven work culture we...

What is the expected outcome, when you have a haughty cowboy President, an arrogant administration and a seemingly stooge in the form of a Supreme Court? Well, no prizes for guessing, you get some blindly dictatorial American laws for the globe. In fact, this time, President Bush and his ‘Administration’ have surpassed all the limits of deforming any civilised society by claiming that they can ‘kidnap’ any foreigner, if they are wanted for crimes in the United States of America. What more, they have the sanction of their Supreme Court as well. In fact, till now it was assumed that American law permits kidnapping only of terror suspects under ‘extraordinary redemption’, but recently it was made clear that the US can kidnap ‘anyone’ who is a criminal in the eyes of America. For that matter, even ‘extraordinary redemption’ is in itself unlawful. On top of this, kidnapping ‘anyone’ who is a criminal in the eyes of America, is a crime without doubt, at least in a civilised and working democ...