There was a time when Trinamool Congress was a political party. At the NDA’s 12th anniversary celebrations, it appeared to have been reinvented as a snack. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his allies tucked into bowls of jhalmuri, Home Minister Amit Shah immediately described the Bengali delicacy as tangy, masaledar, and crunchy. Political wags…
The Telugu film industry likes to boast about numbers. Hundreds of films a year. Massive openings. Record collections. Pan-India blockbusters. On some weekends, it even rivals Bollywood in box-office revenue. But as the Telugu saying goes, raasi kante vaasi goppa – quality matters more than quantity. The uncomfortable truth is that while Telugu cinema has…
The sewer has officially overflowed. Barely had the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) recovered from its grand Delhi adventure – a revolution that promised lakhs but delivered hundreds – when a challenger emerged from the drains of public discourse. Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has announced the formation of the Ishq Karo Party, whose noble…
Politics occasionally writes poetry. More often, it writes farce. Mamata Banerjee’s political career has managed to produce both. In 1998, she stormed out of Congress, accusing the Grand Old Party of ignoring grassroots workers and becoming the private estate of a select few. She named her new outfit the Trinamool Congress – literally, the Congress…
If a man wears a raincoat in the middle of May and walks around under a blazing sun expecting a downpour, people would call him insane. If another guy steps out wearing a helmet despite not riding a motorcycle, not playing cricket, and not working at a construction site, the diagnosis would be equally obvious….
The chilling slogan ‘Raliv, Galiv, Chaliv’ still haunts the collective memory of Kashmiri Pandits. Roughly translated from Kashmiri, it meant: ‘Convert, Leave, or Die.’ In the winter of 1990, these words echoed from mosque loudspeakers across the Kashmir Valley, accompanied by threats and intimidation that forced an entire community into exile. Thousands of Kashmiri Hindus…
Donald Trump has once again done what he does best – charm, flatter, praise, and leave everyone wondering whether to believe a word of it. At a glittering event in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of American Independence, Trump virtually wrapped Bharat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a warm embrace. ‘I love India…
Indian politics has entered a new phase. We have had lotus politics, hand politics, broom politics, cycle politics, lantern politics and enough defections to start a furniture showroom. Now comes the newest entrant – the CJP. Not one, but two. First came the US-based Abhijeet Dipke’s Cockroach Janta Party – a movement that appears to…
Twenty-two seconds. One packet of Melody. And social media did the rest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gift of a packet of the humble Indian toffee to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome was not exactly earth-shaking diplomacy. No agreements were signed over caramel and chocolate. No strategic pact emerged from the packet. Yet the…
There was a time when a five-paise increase could trigger a public uprising. That, of course, was a few decades ago. Students and youth would pour onto the streets if bus fares were raised by five or ten paise. A one-rupee hike in the monthly bus pass was enough to spark protests. Buses were stopped,…
