MS Shanker There are occasions when politics should step aside, and the nation should speak with one voice. The extraordinary courage displayed by Captain Smit Machchhar in saving 174 lives in mid-air is surely one such occasion. The question before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is therefore simple: should the country formally consider its highest civilian…
MS Shanker The political battle over the Chief Election Commissioner is about more than one officer. It is increasingly about the credibility of institutions, electoral processes and the political narratives surrounding them. The latest political confrontation over Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar raises a question that deserves to be examined beyond the daily exchange of…
MS Shanker The All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), once largely identified with Hyderabad and the politics of the old city, has spent the past decade trying to transform itself into a party with a wider national footprint. Its electoral presence has extended beyond Telangana, with victories in Maharashtra and representation in other States. Yet one of…
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%,…
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…
