Passionate About India

The American financial system has hit its worst crisis ever. The crisis has been evident from the fact that in a given day, Dow Jones lost more than 4 per cent, which has been its steepest fall ever since the 9/11 attacks! It all started when Lehman Brothers, one of the largest US investment banks, filed for bankruptcy protection. As if this wasn’t enough, another equally big investment banker, Merrill Lynch, resorted to a merger with the Bank of America, and along with all this, the world’s largest insurer, American International Group (AIG) was also found gasping for breath! In fact, the signals for such an impending crisis were visible from the time the sub-prime meltdown had started, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac literally getting buried under the debris of bad mortgages. No wonder, this is just the beginning; and the big question in everyone’s mind is clearly: who is going to be the next casualty, and how far would this crisis extend. But more than what meets the eye, as far as ...

There are no permanent friends and enemies; only permanent interests. Thanks to the legacy of foreign policy idealism left behind by Jawaharlal Nehru, India often forgets this basic tenet when it comes to pursuing national interests. The result is a yo-yo of knee jerk emotional reactions swinging from love and hatred. One day, China is perceived as the Asian partner along with whom India will herald the Asian century. That euphoria quickly gives way to hysteria and anger over the so-called duplicity of the Dragon. Both reactions are childish and miles away from the kind of hard headed and unemotional pursuit of foreign policy that is required of a modern nation state. Till days before the NSG meeting, it was reported that it was the smaller nations like Ireland, Switzerland and New Zealand that opposed the formal recognition of India as a nuclear power. There were appreciative murmurs of how China was keeping its commitment and supporting the deal. Suddenly, all hell broke loose and th...

As the final curtains on George Bush’s presidential stint begins, media space, blog space and myriad forms of literature are increasingly getting full of reflections from journalists, columnists, foreign policy experts, and leaders, on his tenure as a president. The matter of fact is that probably, there would not be any other American president who has received such blatant criticism on all aspects, and from all walks of life. So much so that it has been predicted by some publications and reports that Bush would go down in the pages of American history as the worst president ever. Some articles have gone to the extent of stating that President Bush would fare even worse than President Harding – the president during the Great Depression! But amidst all this, there have been a few articles that were carried out in Foreign Affairs, The Economist and some other globally recognised media houses, which had caught my attention. Not because of anything else, but on account of the perspective ...

Over some time, I’ve been pondering over some disturbing trends that are evolving in the Indian society. These trends are so very hazardous that if they are left to themselves, then they are potent enough to completely destroy the secular and democratic fabric of our society. The bigger concern is that both the government and the civil society (the elite) are so engrossed in themselves, that they seem to be purposefully overlooking this problem. They are least bothered as these developments nowhere affect them directly. And this conspiracy of silence from all quarters is what is so very bothersome, and is giving leeway to the ones who stand to challenge every aspect of our democratic setup, at will! For they know that there is nothing that can contain them, and in the given environment, they are increasingly becoming more conspicuous with their acts. My concerns are with respect to religious extremism and its most dangerous manifestation in the form of collective vandalism. Unfortunate...

Ever since childhood, I have heard my father say that if Kashmiris don’t want to be a part of India, then “why can’t we think of giving Kashmir independence?" While I always understood that perspective as perhaps being the right thing to do from a very democratic point of view, what forever confused me was the issue of what if every other state also starts asking for independence. Guess my sense of involvement with the Kashmir problem was not serious enough to ponder further. And then came a long phase, when it seemed the trouble was under control. Till about a few months ago, I hadn’t realised it well enough, but my Managing Editor Sutanu Guru said we must do a cover saying "Is Kashmir back to 1989?" I must admit that though I agreed with him, I still didn’t understand the gravity of the situation – even after reading our own cover story (which, incidentally, was the first one in India to pick up the issue). However, as I look at things now, I see that while the Centre ...

The winning of the gold medal by Abhinav Bindra in the Beijing Olympics, 2008, is indeed a matter of great pride for not just the sports loving people of this country but also for every Indian. It is special to me for three key reasons: firstly, the triumph of this young man with a childish innocence has literally brought India out of the notional apartheid and a sort of Below Poverty Line (BPL) status it had had for long in the global sporting arena. His win assumes a larger than life status, considering the fact that never ever in the 112 years of Olympics’ history has any Indian athlete won an individual gold medal; the last gold medal we had earned was in the team event of hockey, and that too 28 years ago! The other reason that makes Abhinav’s feat so special to me is that after watching the India contingent walking past during the inaugural ceremony, I was so filled with shame that I had almost given it a zero chance of anything close to even a single gold – something that’s so h...

The Olympics has always been an event when people across the world keep aside their personal vendetta, forget for sometime the permutations of geopolitics, and gather to enjoy one of the greatest uniting factors of mankind, i.e. sports. Yet, this time, when the Olympics are being staged in China, people across the world are waiting more to see whether China can pull it through successfully, than for anything else. And probably never before in Olympic history has there been a ‘host versus the rest’ phenomenon as much as is clearly present this time. No prizes for guessing that if China doesn’t succeed in pulling it through, not too many people would be unhappy. In the last few years, since China was selected for hosting the 2008 Olympics, the country looked upon this event not as an opportunity to bridge the remaining gaps with the rest of the world, but as a perfect opportunity to flaunt ‘the China way’. And this attitude is evident – right from the construction of a larger than life a...