May 2012
Smash-and-Grab Crony League, The Hindu
I live in Bangalore, down the road from the Karnataka State Cricket Association. I am a member of the KSCA, which means that I can watch all the matches played in its stadium for free, [...]
Congress Party Must Get Over The Gandhis, The Financial Times
A joke doing the rounds several months ago was that the “i” in Brics stood for Indonesia. Recent events lend credence to that witticism. Indian growth rates are closer to 6 per cent than 8 [...]
Varieties of Censorship, The Telegraph
In about the year 1985, I was having dinner with two friends in Chungwa Restaurant, off Chittaranjan Avenue in central Kolkata. We had been undergraduates together in Delhi in the 1970s; now, a decade later, [...]
Ecology and Democracy, The Hindu
The Western Ghats are as important to the ecological and cultural life of the nation as the Himalaya. Running from Maharashtra right down to Kerala, they are a staggeringly rich reservoir of biodiversity. They give [...]
March 2012
Dravid The Man, The Telegraph
A year ago, while recovering from an asthmatic attack, I found some profound consolation in the morning’s newspaper, whose front page carried a photo of a tall, slim, handsome young man in conversation with a [...]
Letting Azad Win, Hindustan Times
In the third week of March 1940, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad delivered the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress, held that year in Ramgarh in Bihar. Azad here spoke of [...]