Passionate About India

As my fifth consecutive and final editorial related to the Mumbai terror attacks and to what we should be doing, this time I am going to write down four random thoughts that are coming to my mind... I hope by the end of the editorial, you can find some relation between all of them and some meaning out of it. The first thought that drives me infuriatingly mad tonight, as I sit down to write this editorial, is that it will all happen again... and too soon, because we have learnt no lessons. Just today, as I boarded the flight from Kolkata to Delhi, I walked into the airport with my large handbag, and was – to my astonishment – not subjected to any security check of any kind. The sickeningly lax security guards standing at the main entrance did not even check anyone’s identity card, leave alone checking our bags using some metal detector, although a security screening gate is kept right outside the entrance. As I walked in, I felt like throwing shoes – the way the Iraqi journalist did rec...

Whenever an issue of immense national concern has arisen, it has been our endeavour at Planman Media to keep focusing on the issue relentlessly, so that people don’t just forget and move on. Keeping with the same ideology, after the Mumbai killings and terror attacks, thanks to our shameful political class, I have decided to write five consecutive editorial articles focusing only on our political class and the need for change. After my last editorial, a significant lot of people wrote to me through emails, text messages etc confirming that though they would themselves want to contest elections, they couldn’t even dream of winning in India when the masses have no clue about what issue and whom to vote for. Thus, with this fourth editorial of mine after the Mumbai massacre, I want to answer these. Why is it that people in India don’t vote for policies and fall for sloganeering instead? Why is it that an educated citizen in this country is in a dilemma about whether to vote at all or not,...

In the backdrop of the Mumbai terror attacks, there has been a lot of talk about the need to go and vote... the need to elect the right government... the need for educated youth to come up and join politics and the need for a new political force that can bring about the real change. This topic is something that’s very close to my heart, as ever since I can remember, may be since I was eight years old or so, I remember my father always told me that it is not politics which is dirty, but the people in politics who have made it dirty; and that politics is the biggest service to a nation that one can think of; something that able and educated men with leadership skills should always think of keeping in the forefront of their ambition list. As a response to my workshops on the Great Indian Dream, as well as to my editorials – especially the ones criticising the government, and more especially the last two on the Mumbai blasts – many people have sent me messages: why criticise; why not try t...

Just as I was about to write this editorial, in the Times Now channel, a young man among those thousands who had gathered this evening near the Gateway Of India, said in the most unabashed manner, which typically reflected the mood of India now. He said in clear terms that he simply doesn’t understand what Manmohan Singh speaks and that he would rather prefer to die fighting a war than to die while dining in a hotel with his family. Just beside him was a placard in which was written, “A nation of lions led by donkeys”. The person stated that as a layman, he knew that there are terrorist camps in PoK, but couldn’t fathom why the Government of India was not doing anything about the issue, instead of begging to Pakistan. The man continued that a country like Bangladesh, which got its independence from India, is now becoming the biggest nemesis of India, sending Huji terrorists across the border every other day for terror attacks in Assam and West Bengal. What that young man was stating cl...

As I remained hooked on to Times Now (which, by far, gave the best coverage possible and reminded me of CNN’s Iraq war coverage way back in 1991), and without sleeping for a moment for the first twelve hours, saw the mockery of our democracy, I really felt sad for our brave policemen who gave up their lives – just like the many innocent people who also paid the price – for a non-committed, spineless, political class ruling this great country. Every time a political leader spoke, it was a feeling of shame that I felt somewhere deep within, and couldn’t help but wonder when we would see the end of this rotten, old and decaying lot who can sell this country to the dogs for a few hundred crores. It was indeed sad to see the nation pay the price for their uncommitted, visionless leadership. Haven’t we had enough of disgusting and shameless statements like ‘we are planning to modernize our equipments and increase budgets for our intelligence departments...’ etc? Forget having any kind of mor...

I needn’t tell our readers how proud we are at Planman Media about our magazines. All of you who have followed my editorial pieces would almost think that we are too arrogant and have a high degree of superiority complex... But I want to confess. While we are very proud that there’s hardly any media house in the country that is capable of giving a more intellectual and incisive analysis of committed news that matters to the country, there is one media house which has too often beaten us with their analysis. And yes, that’s the TOI group. Too often, when we have thought we have an original idea and plan to put it on our cover, we’ve seen, the very next day, the same in the front page of The Times of India - the most recent one being our Aazamgarh story. What was amazing was not that they covered it – everyone covered it – but that the kind of first hand statistics they had in their story showed that that it was not journalism for the heck of it... It was intellectual journalism with com...

Many of the readers, especially those away from Delhi, might wonder what is the BRT in the first place? Well... BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transport system. It’s an effort by the Delhi government to have a separate bus transport corridor in Delhi. So what it has essentially done is that a divider has been constructed in between certain existing roads, wherein half or one third of that road has been reserved only for bus movement. Subsequently, at some places the roads have been widened a little; and at others, the roads have been simply divided into two undemarcated lanes. What has actually irritated the Delhi rich (because they are the ones driving cars – since Tata’s Nano is not yet on the roads) is that now they have less of wide roads to manipulate their cars in. Of course, there is a point here. Delhi was known for its freewheeling wide roads, and suddenly, narrower roads for cars do look irritating. Thus, but obviously, the BRT has come under heavy criticism with a lot of people ev...