The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of ne...
On Jan. 6, a day after the Bangladesh Awami League led by Premier Sheikh Hasina Wazed won an uncontested parliamentary election, US State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf issued a press release expressing the Obama administration’s “disappointment” with the outcome. Carrying the flag of democracy, the State Department called on the Government of...
The 2014 edition of the Jaipur Literary Festival was at least as bustling and crowded as the previous two and it is to the credit of the organizers that in spite of an often inclement weather that made the mostly open air venue rather uncomfortably drafty and soggy, the programme proceeded with very few hitches. The choreography of this annual logo-technical...
Overwhelmed at the sheer diversity and apparent chaos of India, American economist and envoy John Kenneth Galbraith dubbed it “functionary anarchy”, a description that has evoked smiles over the decades. It has taken less than a month of the Aam Aadmi Party to turn the national capital into a dysfunctional anarchy. One can only shudder at the fate of the...
Students sporting tilak on their foreheads and amulets on their bodies were stopped by the Physical Instruction teacher of a Government-aided minority institution before they entered the school premises. The sacred threads and rakshas (amulets) worn for protection round the necks or arms were cut off, and the sindoor, tilak on the...
Dear Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar,
It is only with great trepidation that I am committing the audacity of addressing a letter to you. I live in a crowded suburb of western Mumbai and am fully aware that I am not fit to live within a radius of 100 km of people like you. After all, I did not go the Doon School, nor did I study at St. Stephens or Cambridge, UK. I ...
"Some say I am an anarchist, yes I am", grinned Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during a dharna in the National Capital on January 20, 2014. Yes that’s right; the Chief Minister and his cabinet (constitutional post holders) were staging a protest in their own state (city-state)! Anarchy is a political theory that holds all forms of government to be unne...
If finance minister P Chidambaram were in charge of preparing accounts of a corporate entity, his own officers would possibly have charged him with malicious manipulation and misrepresentation. High handedness, sleight of hand, deception, plain unfairness - anything goes, if only he can get that magic figure for fiscal deficit. The finance minister has made ...
International diplomats will gather Jan. 22 in the Swiss town of Montreux to hammer out a settlement designed to end Syria’s three-year civil war. The conference, however, will be far removed from the reality on the Syrian battleground. Only days before the conference was scheduled to begin, a controversy threatened to engulf the proceedings after the United...
The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan celebrated its Platinum Jubilee Year in 2013, which was also the 125th birth anniversary of its founder KM Munshi. Given the magnitude of resources available to the Bhavan, it was disappointing to see that the twin celebrations turned out to be a low key affair, not befitting the stature of this cultural institution and its visiona...
Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world ...
“At last the world knows America as the savior of the world!” – President Woodrow Wilson, Paris Peace Conference, 1919. The horrors reported each day from Syria and Iraq are enough to make one cry; in particular, the atrocities carried out by the al-Qaeda types: floggings; beheadings; playing soccer with the heads; cutting open dead bodies to remove organs j...
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) often uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. From the early 1950s to the present, the CIA’s intrusion into the foundation field was and is huge. A US Congressional investigation in 1976 revealed tha...
The entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) with a bang is fast changing the political scene of the country. People from all walks of life and strata of society are joining it in thousands, and sensing the groundswell of public response to its brand of politics, the party has lost no time in announcing its national ambitions - latest reports say it will contest 4...
A recent article by the writer on the drift in agricultural research in India elicited scores of positive responses from readers, but none from any agricultural scientist, barring a tame one from a Principal Scientist affiliated to the Planning Board, Government of Kerala, who was candid enough to say that he is working “just for his bread and butter”. While...
Make no mistake about it. The millions of countrymen, especially the young generation yearning for deliverance from the corrupt, insensitive and decrepit UPA regime will be wasting their vote if they are swayed by the syrupy rhetoric of Aam Aadmi Party and decide to support it in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. A vote for AAP would mean a vote for more ...
It may sound farfetched, but the writer is of the opinon that food inflation has propelled the downfall of UPA-II. The Congress president Sonia Gandhi attributed said that inflation was responsible for the decimation of the party in the recent elections to four major north Indian states, but I wish she was more specific and had stated that the culprit was...
Many ancient civilisations (Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Babylonians) have been sun worshippers. They have fallen by the way side and Hindu civilisation alone has survived for several millennia, despite brutal conquests and occupations. The Rig Veda inaugurated the worship of the sun in India, through an elaborate set of rituals called the yajnas, which have p...
Probably the most powerful spectacle at the star-spangled Saifai mahotsav was the cynical disdain of the Samajwadi Party and its Government in Uttar Pradesh towards human suffering, specifically in the Muzaffarnagar relief camps where 34 infants and children are officially admitted to have died of cold and disease. But the deeper lesson that the minority...
Recently there have been some reports in the media that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seriously thinking about some “artha-kranti” proposals that will revolutionize the Indian economy. The proposals seek to eliminate all direct and indirect taxes like income tax, sales tax, corporate tax, service tax and replace them with a single flat bank transaction...
Youngsters in India often rebel against rules and regulations in the name of ‘freedom of choice’ or ‘freedom of expression’. “Colleges should not impose a dress code on students,” some say, claiming that they are now grownup and capable of making their own choices. “Cell phones should be allowed in the campus,” others say citing the need for latest technolog...
Is it just a coincidence that virtually all the world’s current conflicts finds roots in British divide or rule policies or the policies of other European colonial rulers? Sudan’s case is no different. The handful of nations being used as the big bullies in a new wave of military interventions on the pretext of solving conflicts devise their plans...
The recent double bombing in Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad) represent a definitive escalation in the low-level but constant war which has opposed Wahabi insurgents to not only the Kremlin, but also to all the traditional Muslim authorities in Russia. Before looking into what these latest attacks could mean for Russia in general and for the upcoming Sochi Olympic ...
“There are provisions for stripping the powers of MCD if they don’t clear map layouts for construction of new schools,” threatened Manish Sisodia, Delhi’s new Education Minister in the capital’s first Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government led by Arvind Kejriwal and supported by the Congress, just two days after being sworn in. One hoped the nation’s intelligentsi...
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have inadvertently foiled the planned ‘Rahul Show’ at the gala 12th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas beginning January 7. While interacting with the media at his third press conference in nine years, Dr Singh used the official venue of the National Media Centre last Friday to declare Rahul Gandhi’s “outstanding credentials” for ...
Western nations have shown a shocking lack of understanding when it comes to a multifaceted democracy such as India, and the ancient time-tested Hindu Dharma. This lack of knowledge is evident in school textbooks and in higher educational institutions. But recently, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Indian secular elite, fattened on an unhealthy diet of ...
In ancient Rome, especially during the late Republic, oligarchs resorted to mob violence to block, intimidate, assassinate or drive from power the dominant faction in the Senate. While neither the ruling or opposing factions represented the interests of the plebeians, wage workers, small farmers or slaves, the use of the ‘mob’ against the elected Senate, the...
2014 is upon us. For a person who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1961, a year in which the class ring showed the same date right side up or upside down, the 21st century was a science fiction concept associated with Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To us George Orwell’s 1984 seemed so far in the future we would never get there. Now it is...
The electronic and print media in India have consistently projected a perverse and dismal image of the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, notwithstanding the fact that he has been unequivocally cleared of any wrongdoing by a special investigating team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court of India. Its findings have now been accepted by the metropolitan ma...
Following the Vietnam War, US imperial intervention passed through several phases: In the immediate aftermath, the US government faced a humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese liberation forces and was under pressure from an American public sick and tired of war. Imperial military interventions, domestic espionage against opponents and us...
“The best possible way that Japan could contribute in Afghanistan’s future, and thus stabilize a perpetually unstable country and pave the way for multi-nation efforts to interconnect Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran to South Asia, is riding on India’s shoulders.” There is no dispute about the technological brilliance and economic successes that together m...