MS Shanker The latest Rajasthan urban local body election results have once again exposed a fundamental problem confronting the Congress: it remains the principal Opposition party in many states, but it is struggling to build a broad-based political coalition capable of consistently challenging the BJP. The numbers from Rajasthan are significant. In elections to 309…
MS Shanker There are moments in international diplomacy when facts speak louder than political rhetoric. The adoption of the New Delhi Declaration at the 18th BRICS Summit is one such moment—and for the Congress party, particularly senior leader P. Chidambaram, it should be an uncomfortable reality check. Only days before Bharat hosted the summit, Chidambaram…
MS Shanker Is the Congress, once the undisputed national political force that ruled Bharat for decades, gradually losing its identity as a truly national party? The question may sound provocative, but recent political developments suggest that it can no longer be dismissed merely as political rhetoric. What should particularly worry the Congress is not just…
MS Shanker The removal of Konda Surekha from the Telangana Cabinet may, on the surface, appear to be a decisive assertion of Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s authority over the State Congress. But beneath that show of command lies a more uncomfortable political question: has the Chief Minister actually consolidated the Congress, or merely pushed…
MS Shanker The Congress and its political allies may not like it, but they can no longer conveniently dismiss the RSS as a communal organisation without confronting a rather uncomfortable question: what exactly does its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, mean when he unequivocally says that a Hindu who believes Muslims should not live in Bharat is…
MS Shanker Welcome to the golden age of Indian print journalism, where methodology is a myth, reality is optional, and glossing over basic political arithmetic is standard editorial policy. In its latest cover story, a self-proclaimed “national publication” released its flagship popularity survey. The findings? Prime Minister Narendra Modi predictably leads the chart with 49%,…
Brig (retd) GB Reddi Unlike parties that largely awaken when elections approach, the BJP has built its political strength around a very different model: continuous organisation, constant cadre mobilisation and relentless electoral preparedness. That strategy has transformed the party from what was once widely regarded as a predominantly north Indian political force into a formidable…
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge appears to have discovered a wonderfully convenient defence for the controversy surrounding Vande Mataram: if what Congress leaders did on Independence Day was a crime, then Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and even Atal Bihari Vajpayee must also be booked. After all, Kharge argues, they too sang the same version…
MS Shanker The controversy at the Congress headquarters on Independence Day may have begun with a few seconds of a video clip, but it has quickly turned into something much larger: a political test of how Bharat’s oldest national party relates to one of the most emotive symbols of the freedom struggle. During the Congress…
MS Shanker There is a growing need to distinguish between a genuine democratic protest and a politically engineered confrontation masquerading as a student movement. The distinction is not difficult to make if the entire evidence available in the public domain—including live television footage, CCTV recordings, police video, social-media posts and investigative findings—is examined objectively. A…
