October 2016
A Privileged Peep Into Gandhi’s Inbox, The Telegraph
Mohandas K. Gandhi’s own writings are well known to the world: through a series of books and anthologies under his name that appeared in his lifetime; and, more authoritatively and substantively, through the ninety-seven volumes [...]
September 2016
Why We Must Listen To JP On Kashmir, Hindustan Times
On the 4th of October 1966—almost exactly fifty years ago—the great Indian democrat Jayaprakash Narayan spoke at a seminar on Kashmir held in New Delhi. The Valley was in turmoil; the popular leader Sheikh Abdullah [...]
August 2016
A Modest Proposal To Improve Governance, Hindustan Times
The Harvard economist Lant Pritchett has called India a ‘flailing state’. The signs are all around us; in the decaying government schools and the declining public hospitals, in the apathy and incompetence of the police, [...]
How Mining Corrodes Democracy, The Telegraph
When the new millennium dawned, the poster boy of economic liberalization in my home state, Karnataka, was N. R. Narayana Murthy. A man from a middle-class home, with no tradition of entrepreneurship in his family, [...]
Indian Marxists And Their Selective Outrage, The Telegraph
In a recent essay in the Times Literary Supplement, the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif marvelled at the unending flood of books and essays on the Palestinians, these the work of Palestinians themselves, but also of [...]
July 2016
Looting The Himalaya – And The Himalayans, The Telegraph
In recent months, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh have been in the news. In both states, elected Governments run by the Congress have been destabilized by the ruling party at the Centre, and then dismissed by [...]