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What your nela and what your jala says about you
First Cauvery, now Hogenakal: Karnataka’s river of distrust with Tamil Nadu runs deep. After sparring over how to share water from the Cauvery, the two States have now locked horns …
Is it a crime to break a marriage engagement?
What is the legal status of a marriage engagement ceremony? Is breaking an engagement an actionable offence? In case there is no engagement and no ceremony, and the couple are …
When our politicians go strictly by the book
“One party’s discovering India, and the other’s experimenting with the truth.” E.P. Unny in The Indian Express Also read: CHURUMURI POLL: Is L.K. Advani lying on IC-814?
One-thousand three-hundred & ninety-four words
In 1997, when Outlook crowned the then Congress president Sitaram Kesri as the Villain of the Year, the magazine’s managing editor Tarun J. Tejpal described why Kesri had been picked …
‘First businessmen, now their agents in the RS’
Anil Ambani‘s decision to hitch his wagon to the Samajwadi Party and become a member of the Rajya Sabha was generally seen to have been one of the contributing factors …
Cricket’s cheap kicks and lingering hangovers
Ramachandra Guha in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “In my opinion, Test cricket may be compared to the finest Scotch, 50-overs a side to Indian Made Foreign Liquor, and 20-20 to the …
Ours is not to ask why; ours is to just do and die
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: My colleague D.P. Das Gupta (all names changed) called and confirmed he would be coming to Madras by the next day’s evening flight. DP was coming with …
If the bank can’t come to the customer, then…
According to the 2001 census, 72 per cent of Indians live in rural areas. According to finance minister P. Chidambaram, he can’t do anything about farmers borrowing money from moneylenders. …
Who slaughtered the unsung zero of Karnataka?
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: While Kiran Rao Batni was lamenting the birth of naan, malai kofta and chicken tikka masala as local food in Bangalore (Anna-sambaar to the American …
Who really is benefitting from India’s IT boom?
The economist Thomas Robert Malthus argued that “conspicuous consumption” was good because of the trickle-down effect. Once the affluent began to spend their money on engaging domestic servants, buying expensive …
‘Indian media doesn’t cover 70% of population’
The Magsaysay Award-winning rural affairs editor of The Hindu, Palagummi Sainath, continues his one-man crusade against the growing disconnect between mass media and mass reality. At the launch of the …
CHURUMURI POLL: Is L.K. Advani lying on IC-814?
The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani‘s “charm offensive”, courtesy his memoirs My Life, My Country, has run into rough water thanks to his breathstopping claim that he did not …
All the money in the world cannot buy you…
Some of India’s most visible brands have an incredible propensity to put out some incredibly inane advertisements. Coca-Cola continues to be the gold-standard. But whipper-snappers like Airtel are fast showing …
Announcement: Jeremy Seabroook coming
What Rahul Gandhi can learn from Brad Pitt
In Steven Soderbergh‘s Ocean’s Twelve, there is this brief interlude between Linus Caldwell and Rusty Ryan (played by Brad Pitt) at the railway station: Linus: Hey, can I ask you …
The day Ford said Tata to Jaguar and Land Rover
David Kiley asks in Der Spiegel: “Could Winston Churchill, or even the current Queen of England, have imagined a half-century ago that a pair of Britain’s proudest industrial icons would …
Manmohan Singh versus Lal Krishna Advani?
Harish Khare, The Hindu‘s deputy editor based in Delhi, has termed Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar‘s suggestion that the ruling United Progressive Alliance should contest the next general election together …
Is online matchmaking becoming a bit of a scam?
PALINI R. SWAMY writes from Bangalore: At the dawn of the year of the lord 2008, Arvind Swaminathan collated a few news items to show how Information Technology whizkids in …
We live in 21st century. Our minds are in 16th.
Diptosh Majumdar, the national political editor of CNN-IBN, on the rape and murder of British tourist Scarlett Keeling in Goa: “Keeling’s death nails a great lie that we try to …
Why the Queen sold her diamonds and jewels
The Wodeyars of Mysore are at once mighty and mysterious. Mighty, because they ruled for close to 550 years from AD 1399. Mysterious, because despite their long reign and the …
‘What’s the Left’s vision of India i.e. Bharat?’
Editorial in The Indian Express: “What is it that the Left really wants? That the clock be turned back? Increase taxation, renationalise privatised PSUs, bring back the controller of capital …
Is this the democracy our founders fought for?
BHAMY V. SHENOY writes: For nearly a week now, newspapers in Karnataka have been devoting an obscene amount of space for the visit of an ordinary Congress MP from the …
If you can’t win ’em, beat ’em with your prices?
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government is offering Rs 1.5 crore per acre to farmers of Jhurheri village in return for land for the Chandigarh international airport. In addition, the government is …
CHURUMURI POLL: Is Left an enemy of the poor?
In pre-liberalisation India, Left parties had a well-earned reputation of being the bugbears of industrialisation. Striking work at the drop of a hammer, making unreasonable labour demands, employing violence to …
Announcement: P. Sainath lecture on media
P. Sainath, the Magsaysay Award winning rural affairs editor of The Hindu, will deliver a lecture on the media in Bangalore on Thursday, 27 March 2008. The lecture has been …