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CHURUMURI POLL: Target Sri Sri Ravi Shankar?
The future Nobel laureate of India, Sri Sri Ravishankar (SSRS) of the Art of Living, is in the news. According to a PTI report, the 54-year-old spiritual guru escaped unhurt …
Who’s running the Feudal Republic of India? ANC.
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: I met the Ace Political Expert (APE) at Cheluvamba Park doing his yogic walk. After a couple of rounds, he sat on the stone beach. He beckoned …
Rahul Gandhi’s ascension: A foregone conclusion?
It is rare for two columnists of diverse political leanings to begin their column on the same day in two different newspapers with the same words: “On June 19, Rahul …
CHURUMURI POLL: Are Maoists “terrorists”?
In theory, the motivation for the upsurge in Maoism in the second term of the UPA is said to be the hand over of vast tracts of tribal land to …
Is Manmohan Singh becoming a “Rollback PM”?
Yashwant Sinha, finance minister in the former BJP-led NDA regime, had a well-earned reputation as “Rollback FM”. Given the speed with which key policy decisions taken in haste are being …
Do it yourself: How to kill a City in 53 easy steps
Future historians looking for solid, incontrovertible evidence on how a mentally challenged civilisation which couldn’t think beyond its arse, nose or purse, killed a fine City, need look no further …
When the reservation chart had a sack order
Almost everybody seems to have an opinion, and not a good one at that, at prime minister Manmohan Singh‘s recent performance at his press conference in New Delhi, forgetting that …
CHURUMURI POLL: Caste in the census, or not?
The Union cabinet meets this evening to decide on including a column on “caste” in the 2011 censu, a move seen as a tacit quid pro quo for the support …
Even Thomas Crown* has to doff his bowler hat
Any fool can steal some money, and many do. But it takes sizeable cojones to steal the machine that dishes out the dough. Which is what a bunch of desperadoes …
One question I’m dying to ask Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met the ladies and gentlemen of the Indian media for the second time in six years on the completion of the first year of his second …
Why Manmohan should talk to the media more
B.V. RAO writes from New Delhi: On Monday, May 24, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will address a press conference in New Delhi to unveil the report card of his government’s …
If you don’t die in a tragedy, you are a nobody?
Death—ordinary, unglamourous, “smalltown” death—increasingly catches the English media on the wrong foot. Unlike “26/11”, in which almost as many people were killed in the Mangalore air crash, you do not …
BASTARDS WHO HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS
The following is the full text of a press release issued by Environment Support Group, a Bangalore-based NGO, on the air crash in Mangalore. Doubtless, it represents one side of …
The VIP said: ‘Ondu condolence message kottbidi’
Death manages to inspire only cliches even among the best amongst us. But it takes a particular genius to be inured to it; to be so unmoved as to only …
Who says you can’t say what tomorrow holds?
Death scribbled an ugly autograph at Bajpe Airport today, but the book of life is really about life. Tens of hard-working men and women who shackled their seatbelts after dinner …
Harshi wasn’t done becoming Harshi yet; won’t
The tweet sent by 19-year-old Harshini Poonja before she boarded the Dubai-Mangalore plane last night. The profile on her blog, last updated yesterday, reads: “I am not done becoming me …
Mangalore Air Crash: Pictures that tell the tale
Photographs: Karnataka Photo News
CHURUMURI POLL: Plane trouble or human error?
Aeroplane technology has unquestionably improved by leaps and bounds. “Fly by wire technology” is a phrase that trips off the tongues of airline executives and experts, hacks and flacks. But, …
Once upon a time, when my doctor was an angel
No profession in India—not even journalism, perhaps—has plunged into the abyss of disrepute with the speed and determination of medicine. Across the country, doctors, once seen as saviours next only …
Writing the Future* on the ‘Joga Bonito’*?
* Write the future * Joga Bonito
An open letter to home minister P. Chidambaram
Dear Shri Chidambaram This is in response to your repeated taunts in your NDTV interview that “civil society” must respond to the wanton killing by the Naxals. It appears that …
Why super stars will always remain ahead of us
Exhibit A: Sachin Tendulkar Dalbir Singh, who was Sachin’s room-mate when they were 15 years old, is grievously hurt in a 2002 motorcycle accident with a tanker. He suffers multiple …
‘Either you are with us, or you are with them’?
As night follows day, Monday’s naxal attack on a civilian bus killing civilians has predictably led to the usual finger-wagging against rights activists and, in the quote-unquote patois of home …
They also serve who hang and dangle and wipe
In the good old days, “government service” meant everybody in the service of the government, from the boss babu to the head clerk to the peon. But in new fangled …
How our TV networks are killing the golden goose
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: One of the popular scraps doing the rounds on Facebook is: “Thank God, India failed to scrape through to the semifinals of the Twenty20 World Cup! Otherwise …