Opinions

The Indian Express, the daily we grew up to revere as the reporter's newspaper, doesn't seem to be so any more. The more you see its reportage on the Tatas, the more it seems to belong to the latter. We ought to have seen it coming when Shekhar Gupta recently walked less and talked more with Ratan Tata. The Tata group is in the thick of the 2G scam, but Gupta came across as one who had decided that they indeed were not and tagged along with Ratan Tata in the NDTV show, Walk the Talk. All through...

The month of November saw two uncannily similar elections ― in Myanmar and Egypt. In both cases, the ruling dispensation carried the day at the hustings marred by repression, violence and electoral fraud. Democracy stood ruthlessly murdered. The regimes in power reined in the media in the run-up to the elections and smothered all dissent. Both elections were a mockery of democratic processes and the regimes in power won handsomely. The difference, however, lies in the details; among them is the...

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141) One often gets to hear and read this thing about us, in a democracy, getting the politicians that we deserve. This clamour had hit a feverish pitch during the last general elections in 2009. From Facebook status messages to tweets, the underlying message was this: we should elect politicians who are clean. One year down the line, even a cursory look at the day’s...

Two months back when an all-party delegation visited Kashmir Valley, the buzz was about confidence-building measures (CBMs). Everyone agreed that the Constitution of India provides ample scope to accommodate any legitimate political demand through "dialogue, civil discourse and peaceful negotiations." The fact that protests are not rocking the streets of Srinagar and other towns now, does not mean that public resentment has died down. The Valley hasn't turned greener in the last two months, it...

Dialogue is crucial to democracy. The communication gap between the people of Kashmir and the rest of India created by the Union and Jammu & Kashmir governments along with a pliant India media had long created a situation had created a lopsided situation where the voices of one side were not heard at all. Given this backdrop, Hurriyat (M) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Executive Council member, Bilal Gani Lone's trip to cities in mainland India was a welcome step. The Mirwaiz's intention was...

On Wednesday, Iraq deposited the 20th instrument of ratification for the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances to the Secretary General of the United Nations. What this meant was that the Convention will enter into force on December 23, 30 days after the 20th accession or ratification. The text was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 20, 2006 and opened for signature on February 6, 2007. So far 87 States have signed, and 20...

Nitish Kumar's victory at the hustings in Bihar is being described as the that of development-oriented governance over caste-based politics. On the face of it, this rightly sums up results. The numbers of the poll results, however, hide others — the darker side of this victory. A total of 141 MLAs out of 241 analysed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW), a nationwide campaign comprising of more than 1200 NGOs and other citizen-led organisations, had...

There are many casualties of an entertainment-driven media industry. One of those is heritage. News about cultural heritage are usually relegated to news briefs and used as fillers in newspapers. The less said the better about television. So when UNESCO announced earlier this week that three Indian elements were among the 46 inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, it failed to make news. Among major news establishments, it was The Hindu alone which...

The outrage in the Western world over the Sakineh Ashtiani issue increasingly seems like an outrage that is directed more at Iran, than any real concern over human rights. US President Barack Obama, who only the other day, lectured India on human rights, so far has not been able to utter a single world against a similar case in Saudi Arabia, where another young woman is on a death row. Last month, the Supreme Court in Riyadh endorsed the death sentence imposed on Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek...

Global reports are often academic exercises which don’t mean much if looked at in isolation. But if you take a bunch together, things begin to make sense. In the last one month there have been as many as five such reports – taken together they give us a composite picture about how much India is shining. And yes, also where we stand globally. The first two are similar, but come from different sources – the World Wealth Report 2010 (WWR) from Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management...