| Bayonet-less to Lhasa |
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This writer, briefed by Beijing’s bamboo-curtain bureaucrats, and let loose on a long leash in the lama-lands around Lhasa since May 2, has good news for Manmohan Singh. Despite the three-week-long border stand-off in Ladakh, the new rulers in Beijing and their mandarins (yes, the originals) don’t blame him or his colleagues. They put the blame for the ‘border hysteria’ on... |
| Police chiefs, go to school! |
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A slum-dweller went to the police last week, saying his five-year-old Gudiya hadn't come home. The police refused to look. Neighbours found her behind a locked door, savagely raped, given up for dead. A college girl who went to protest was slapped by an
assistant commissioner.Mukesh Ambani went to the police, saying the Indian Mujahideen were scaring him. The state sent a platoon of... |
| Jaguar lies and plane truths |
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ongress leaders are outraged. Their dear departed Rajiv Gandhi was called an arms agent by a western diplomat in a 38-year-old cable, now wiki-leaked. “Baseless,” said a livid Congress spokesman Janardan Dwivedi. Come clean, said the BJP's Prakash Javadekar.Both are missing the point. The leaks are perhaps the best compliment ever paid to the integrity of India's leaders in... |
| When in Lanka, do as the Romans do |
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Henry Wotton described an ambassador as an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. Italian envoy Daniele Mancini took this line literally. Alas, in a court of law.“Unacceptable,” cried Manmohan Singh. You may go to jail, warned his lawyer Harish Salve. I have immunity, said Mancini. “We will see,” said the court which ordered airports to block His... |
| Termites, limpets and other insects |
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L.K. Advani confessed at the BJP conclave that Sushma Swaraj’s silver tongue gave him a complex. He likened her oratory to Vajpayee’s. That is his way of saying she is prime-minister material. That is also his way of saying that Narendra Modi, who had spoken before Sushma, is acid-tongued, and not PM material.Modi can win votes and influence the masses. At times the mob, too. Without... |
| Entry from ‘back side’ only |
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When it comes to arms buys, we have a false sense of rectitude: no dalals please, we’re Indians. This has barred the front doors of the South Block to honest brokers, while wheeler-dealers are getting in through the back doors. ‘Entry from back side’ has become an ubiquitous Indian-English signage in our power corridors.George Fernandes had sought to legalise arms agents. He... |
| The gunpowder blot |
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TWO hangings and a few elections. Punishing politics! say human rights activists. Capital! say the government, the opposition and most of the political class.No major political party has dissented with the decision to hang Afzal Guru. The communists have dissented with the manner, not the matter. The real dissenters, mostly apolitical activists, say the decision to hang Afzal was political. Of... |
| The chaos called Telangana |
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Public memory is proverbially short, but politically long. K. Chandrasekhar Rao says Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi promised a separate Telangana in the UPA’s common minimum programme of 2004. He supported and joined Manmohan’s first government against that promise, and stayed put for a while without a portfolio. Now honour your word, he says.Much water has flowed down the Krishna... |
| Torment of silence |
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Silence is golden, but prolonged silence doesn’t suit statesmen.Manmohan took time to react to the gang-rape and the anguished protests, and then to the killing of two soldiers by Pakistan’s Special Services Group. His statement, that “it cannot be business as usual with Pakistan”, came a week later. His aides should've quoted Harold Wilson to him: that a week is a... |
| Lost in the street |
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When Anna and his mutinous mobs asked for the right to legislate, most of us said laws are made in Parliament, not on the streets. Very rightly.Now the champions of Parliament have gone to the extreme. They think that leaders’ place is Parliament, and shun the streets. Very wrongly.Parliament was in session when the horrible mass rape of a young woman happened in a moving bus in Delhi. MPs... |
| Flak for the flag in Male |
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Vladimir Putin, when he comes in December, can expect a more sympathetic hearing on the Sistema case from Manmohan and company than what he has been getting.Moscow had been pleading with our Prime Minister’s Office and the foreign office, in the name of all the MiGs, missiles, uranium cakes, cryogenic engines and Raj Kapoor movies, to save Sistema’s investments from the 2G mess. So... |
| The Guns of Manmohan |
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You think you’ve been getting away with it all this time, standing by? Well, son, your bystanding days are over! You’re in it now, up to your neck!”Captain Mallory (played by Gregory Peck) had a pistol in hand when he uttered these words to the constantly grumbling Corporal Miller (David Niven) in that all-time favourite The Guns of Navarone.Manmohan, a much milder man than... |
| Socialistic hallucinations |
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A few weeks ago, when Manmohan Singh’s stocks were down, some of his pals and fans tried to cheer him up with a debate whether his economics was Keynesian, post-Keynesian, ante-Keynesian or anti-Keynesian. Keynesians are economists who believe that the poor have to be cared for, if the rich have to prosper and if the socialists have to perish. Marxians dub this as ‘bribing the... |
| Wives and vices for the White House |
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I have been in the US for a week, watching the wild vote chase for the White House. Till the Tuesday New York debate, I hadn’t heard any of the candidates mention India, its ‘underachiever’ PM, or his recent ‘overachievement’ of opening doors to American retailers.No news from the US isn’t necessarily bad news for our PMO or foreign office. Things get bad for... |
| All the Presidents’ doubts |
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The government has reasons to celebrate over the Supreme Court’s answer to its presidential reference on allocation of natural resources. Do what you think is right, S.H. Kapadia’s court told the government. Auction the resources, allot them to first-comers, give them to the poor and go to heaven, or draw lots and go to hell. Policy is not the court’s cup of tea, coffee or... |
| Who’s afraid of Barack Obama? |
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Time called Manmohan an underachiever; The Washington Post called him a tragic figure. Prakash Karat thinks such “pressures and criticism” from the west made the PM give the go-ahead to FDI in retail.Things aren’t so simple in this widely-webbed world. Manmohan is sensitive to western criticism, but they won’t call him names for a few Walmart stores and airline shares.... |
| Zero loss and zero hours |
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When the monsoon session blows over on September 7, the two houses of Parliament would have sat for only a fraction of the time they had been scheduled to sit. The session was planned to have 20 working days; the houses worked for hardly seven. The government had wanted to get 29 bills passed; the opposition helped pass three. Thank God who, the Chief Justice says, dwells in the Constitution.... |
| All out for no loss |
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Harry Truman, who atom-bombed Hiroshima, had a plaque on his desk which read, “the buck stops here.” No such sign in our PMO.Constitutional pundits would say this is because the Indian cabinet is collectively responsible to Parliament; the Indian PM individually is not. Whereas the US president is singularly responsible for all the bad things happening in his country. In the rest of... |
| Curiosity killed the fast |
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Independence Day speeches of PMs are eminently forgettable discourses. The Red Fort moment has its symbolism; the words have little significance. History isn’t made there; only observed.Save a few. Such as Rajiv Gandhi’s 1985 announcement of the Assam accord signed a few hours before the I-Day dawn, Narasimha Rao’s 1994 threat to Pakistan that his “unfinished agenda”... |
| Still frames from the steel frame |
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The PMO, not the office but the institution, lost two outstanding men last fortnight—P.N. Dhar who was Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, and R. Gopalakrishnan who was Manmohan Singh’s additional secretary.The two were in the same office in different times. One was an academic economist who strayed into administration; the other an administrator who had an academic’s... |
| Animal farm of economists |
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Congress spokesman Manish Tewari is miffed that Time has called the PM an ‘underachiever’, a term used by headmasters to describe students who scored low grades. Like all of us in the free media, Time’s editors have a right to call a spade a grade, or a PM a PJ, as long as they don’t break the laws of defamation. The Economist once called Indira Gandhi ‘Kali’;... |
| A tale of two economists |
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The spirits of two US secretaries of state have been haunting Pranab Mukherjee. One is of the late Alexander Haig, who announced “I am in charge here”, soon after his president, Ron Reagan, was shot. The statement sealed his career.Much is made of a similar story that Mukherjee asked to be made interim PM after Indira Gandhi was shot. There is no confirmation of the story, but it is... |
| Caesar’s wives and concubines |
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There are two things common between the in
cumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and once-aspirant prime minister L.K. Advani. One is that both have their nativity places in Pakistan.Advani visited Pakistan once, declared M.A. Jinnah secular and dashed his last chance to become prime minister. Manmohan hasn’t visited Pakistan yet, and is retaining his prime ministership. He may go... |
| We won’t spare you, Shankar! |
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The founding fathers, in their wisdom as C.P. Snow would have put it, created a twin-house Parliament for India. Often ministers have to speak or make statements in both houses on the same topic the same day. Normally they read from the same text in both houses. That’s better than what they do in the US Congress. There, they don’t even read. Take it as read, they say.Manmohan Singh,... |
| Raisina Chill |
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Economists like Manmohan Singh talk of ‘other things remaining equal’. Politicians in the past promised to bring about equality, if other things remained equal. Other things didn’t remain equal; we didn’t become equal.Like Orwell’s animals, all citizens are equal, but some are more equal. The first among those more equals is the Prime Minister. He aids and advises... |
| The height of honour |
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It was gracious of Manmohan Singh to ask Asif Zardari, who was winging his way to Ajmer, to take a journey break, and break bread with him. And gallant of him to offer help in clearing things in Siachen, where an avalanche had killed several Pakistani soldiers a couple of days earlier.Soldiers are funny people. They kill the enemy in combat, but when they find the enemy in other kinds of trouble,... |
| Korean Wagah, bah! |
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Manmohan Singh had a packed schedule in Seoul late March. In two days, he inspected a guard of honour, talked trade, Posco, investments and nuclear energy with President Lee Myung-bak over lunch, addressed South Korean tycoons, attended a full-day nuclear summit, had one-to-ones with the PMs of Norway, Italy and Turkey, and had a pull-aside meeting with Pak PM Yusuf Raza Gillani. Finding Lee a... |
| United colours of federalism |
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Chief ministers, especially those in opposition-ruled states, haven’t been fans of federal home ministers. Not so with Chidambaram. Most of the BJP CMs used to like his tough talk on terrorists and rough ways with the Maoists. They even fell for his Green Hunt, though he swears he had never launched it. That is what happens when you like a guy. You credit him with deeds he hasn’t... |
| Chandrayaani’s plight; Browne’s flight |
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A decade ago, we cocked a snook and a few nukes at the Pakistanis, saying: You put your bomb-maker A.Q. Khan under house-arrest; we put our missile-maker Abdul Kalam in the President’s house. The shoe is on the other foot now. We have A.Q. Khanned the man who sent the first Indian rocket to the moon.Madhavan Nair & Co should burn in hell if they have sinned, or freeze on the poles of... |
| Manmohan, Markandey and the media |
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Critics say the government is suffering from a performance deficit. The government believes it is only an image deficit. An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. So Manmohan Singh has gone for an image makeover—in the real world and the virtual world.In real India, ruled from Raisina, he has appointed ace journalist Pankaj Pachauri his communications adviser. Pachauri will report... |
| Chief's age? Pray, how old is Army? |
| By protocol, the President doesn’t visit other dignitaries’ houses. Among the few exceptions are the abodes of the service chiefs. She drops in for tea at their houses on the ‘birthdays’ of their services. She will drive to the Army House on January 15, the day on which, 63 years ago, K.M. Cariappa took over as the first Indian commander-in-chief.Cariappa wasn’t sure... |
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Listening to Paul Robeson’s rare recordings of two very special concerts, during a recent visit to the US, was an emotional experience for us. The first concert was at the AME Zion Church in New York on June ... 
The brouhaha over the Supreme Court description of the CBI as a “caged parrot” has led to the formation of a group of ministers to consider granting autonomy to the agency. The GoM, led by Finance Minister ... 