/Tag: probity in public life

THE ABSENT CELEBRANT


The Telegraph

It is well known that when India became free on the 15th of August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi declined to join the festivities in New Delhi. While his follower Jawaharlal Nehru spoke in the Council Hall about India’s tryst with destiny, and the crowds danced on the streets outside, Gandhi was in Calcutta, seeking to restore peace [...]

FAITH AND FREEDOM


The Telegraph

It is well known that when India became free on the 15th of August 1947, Mahatma Gandhi declined to join the festivities in New Delhi. While his follower Jawaharlal Nehru spoke in the Council Hall about India’s tryst with destiny, and the crowds danced on the streets outside, Gandhi was in Calcutta, seeking to restore peace [...]

DEGREES OF DEGRADATION


The Telegraph

In recent years, there has been a sharp decline in standards of political debate in India. In and out of Parliament, issues concerning the public good are rarely discussed logically or dispassionately. The arguments more often reflect ideological prejudice or personal hostility rather than rational thought. The degradation has been palpable for some time now; but [...]

PUBLIC OFFICE


PRIVATE GAIN

‘Public service’ is now a less-than-clean word, associated in the middle-class mind with corruption and nepotism. It was not always so. One of my abiding childhood memories is of opening the door on a winter evening to Bhawani Singh, a peon who worked in the Forest Research Institute. A Garhwali from the Pindari ghati, it was [...]

TWO INCHES OF FOAM


The Hindu

In the long history of Cabinet Government in India, perhaps only a handful of Ministers shall be remembered for having carried out programmes that radically reshaped the lives of their people. As Home Minister between 1947 and 1950, Vallabhbhai Patel integrated the princely states, thus altering the politics and geography of modern India. As Finance Minister [...]