Passionate About India

We, at The Sunday Indian, were perhaps the first to do a serious cover story warning the BJP government of the looming agrarian crisis. And we believe it's necessary to repeat the same given the seriousness of the issue and that despite only 15 percent of GDP coming from agriculture, the fact is that India still resides in villages and agriculture remains the livelihood of about 50 percent of the population. Forgetting about those marginalized masses could be equivalent to inviting catastrophe – not just humanitarian, but also political. Two weeks back, the Kisan Panchayat was held in Delhi and it is more than clear that the farmers' movement is gaining serious momentum across the country. As many as 187 regional kisan forums gathered on Parliament Street under the umbrella of the Kisan Panchyat. The forum, headed by Raju Shetty MP, VM Singh, Hannan Maulah former MP, CPI General Secretary Atul Kumar Anjan and Yogendra Yadav, yet again reminded the government that farmers acros...

Ever since Indira Gandhi’s death, one has clearly seen that the Gandhi family has been dragged into politics by the party despite the family members being extremely reluctant. It’s no secret that Sanjay Gandhi was the man interested in politics while Rajiv clearly wanted to be far away from it. Unfortunately, the one who was to be in politics went to fly and met his end. And the one who was to be flying, went into politics and met his end. An ironic but perfect mismanagement of resources that, since then, has become a hallmark of the Congress party! Again, after Rajiv, Sonia was completely disinterested in politics and left the party to P. V. Narasimha Rao. But unfortunately, after the initial stability, the party became shaky; and in the absence of any leader, went back with a begging bowl to the family for support. Reluctantly, Sonia took charge and Manmohan Singh had a double run at the office. But with massive corruption charges flying all around, an anti-corruption movement st...

As our PM Modi calls for strict action and immediate FIRs against Gau Raksha vigilantes, we need to think far beyond. Such acts won't vanish till we allow secularism to be mocked and in fact become fashionable through the use of words like "sickulars" to describe secular people. Our PM now needs to clearly and loudly state that not only would killing of human beings in the name of cow protection be treated with an iron hand but even any statement against our constitutional pledge to be a secular state won't be tolerated. Secularism should be the only religion of this nation till people become atheists – that is, till they give up their immature and illogical religions based on the false concept of existence of different varieties of man-made Gods.  In fact, leave alone religion and god, to me personally, it's a shame that in 2017, we still have a word called atheists. I mean, do we have a word for those who believe that the Earth is round? Do we have a word f...

I await good cinema! And I await commercial cinema with a hope they will be good! I love Ray’s Pather Paanchaali and have seen it as many times as I have seen Sholay! And I love Irfan Khan and I adore SRK! So when the mini-trails of Jab Harry Met Sejal were released, I was very excited. SRK hasn’t delivered something exceptional in a long time. And this looked like it. It’s got the Badshah of Bollywood SRK, the empress of acting Anoushka and the undisputed king of poetic direction Imtiaz Ali helming it. In fact, the second mini-trail was indeed exceptional. It gave a feel that this would be fun to watch!! In the same, Sejal comes to Harry with an indemnity bond stating that in case they were to have any sexual intimacy or full intercourse, Harry would be absolved of all legal charges. Harry obviously finds it very exciting – specially in these days of over the top definitions of date rapes and false accusations worldwide (without trying to trivialize the same – BBC News; Does India ...

At 80, my father, Malay Chaudhuri, finally finished writing his dream book in which he presents a forceful argument for an exploitation free world with a maximum wage ratio of the highest paid to lowest paid worker at 3:1. The book by itself is no less than a revolution by itself. I genuinely believe that it has the potentiality of unleashing many an Arab Spring across the world. I am a proud son who just came back from London, where Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee launched his revolutionary book, What Marx Left Unsaid, A Theory of Economic Justice at the Power Brands Global - London International Forum for Equality. It's a pleasure, as a proud son and lifetime student of Malay Chaudhuri, to share my thoughts in this editorial on this amazing revolutionary theory of economic justice. I have grown up at home hearing from my father about his theory of production of skills by skills… literally from my early childhood; just like my son, who now has been hearing it from my father si...

Yogi Adityanath   as the   CM  of   UP  might have come as a rude shock to many. But it was always on the cards. Narendra Modi has been growing too big for RSS. And after becoming PM, he hadn’t once supported openly a single of the innumerable nonsense pelted out by RSS or its fringe groups. And make any analysis. Call the Congress anything, the Rahul-Akhilesh combine didn’t lose because Akhilesh was very bad and definitely not because of Rahul Gandhi. Akhilesh has been quite decent and speaks very well and keeping the memes aside Rahul Gandhi today speaks better than most of the BJP leaders who were campaigning in UP. He has worked hard on his communication.  In fact, the Congress won three of the five states irrespective of who formed the government. So, ‘Rahul Gandhi means no seats in states’, is a bogus theory and argument. What is happening the world over and in India right now is high voltage personality contests. Modi being the world-beating lead...

October 21, 1994. A phone call changed everybody’s life in our family forever. The call was to inform us that my brother – Aurobindo, then all of 19 years – had died in a road accident on the Gurgaon highway. A speeding bus hit the motorbike on which he was the pillion rider. Post his death, we set up the Aurobindo Chaudhuri Great Indian Dream Foundation, and have always had road safety concerns amongst our goals. So, I am most concerned about road safety especially on highways. No one, I am sure, can question that. Yet, I am against the recent ban on liquor shops on highways in India. I am actually against most moral bans. Bihar and Gujarat have put a ban on alcohol consumption. Controversies continue around it in Goa and Kerala and now the big blow has been the order to shut down liquor shops on all highways across India from April 1. Yet, just like we have a minimum age for getting married all over the world, minimum age for a driver’s licence and minimum age for voting, I believ...