Lalu Prasad Yadav justifies Emergency rule!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stands isolated?

Politics as a calling is never kind to indecisive leaders!

Democracies: strong and weak democracies

Dictatorships: ideologically-based and military dictatorships

Democracies are facing new challenges everywhere. In India there are challenges now for our democracy, as coalition partners, the Left and the casteist allies, stand distanced from the Congress party. Who is leading the coalition government? Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh?

Politics is such a serious subject that hardly we find today serious political debates on matters of high political principles. Is politics a short-term affair? Has it no long-term implications?

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Sir Berlin was professor of political philosophy at Oxford during the late 50s. I used to attend his lectures as an undergraduate student. In his time Sir Berlin was considered the greatest living thinker of political and social issues. Being born in Russia and a Jew at that he was closely associated with events during the Russian Revolution and later when the state of Israel was formed. This book is the first biography oh him and gives a complete account of he evolved in a formidable authority on his times.

This is a journal with a long history. It was launched long ago in 1965 as an ordinary school newsletter when I was running a rural school. Through the years it had evolved into several phases to its present format. Today this monthly magazine is read by schools, college and public libraries all over India through subscriptions. In a way this journal my own intellectual evolution and covers a wide range of subjects from education to politics, culture, society, reminiscences.

This is the latest biography of the eminent jurist. He played a leading role in interpreting the constitution of India. This is a beautifully written book by the veteran journalist M.V Kamath and gives a full account of the jurists many faceted skills and achievements. I have written of this elsewhere on this blog.

The multi-faceted genius of a lawyer.

The book (Nani A.Palkhivala, a life by M.V. Kamath, Nani A.Palkhivala Memorial Trust, Hay House India, 2007, pp 524, Rs.595) is a rare one. A beautifully written book on a beautifully-lived life. The subject of the biography is a distinguished lawyer whose types are not born every time in these days of fast changing society and values. The writer of the biography is also equally a distinguished journalist. One reason why I bought the book in the first instance and decided to   review it is, among other reasons, a purely personal one. I happened to know both the late Palkhivala and also Mr. Kamath.

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Sonia Gandhi’s future political leadership hinges on the Congress party’s performance in the next round of Assembly elections. Sonia Gandhi’s political leadership is not her own making. It has been thrust on her by circumstances not even wildly imagined by her. Yet, politics is politics and here she is, now saddled with such awesome responsibilities. One doesn’t know her fully and the irony is that those who are supposed to be close to her now don’t know a thing about her at all! That is the source for all anxieties and fears arising about the fast changing realities of politics, both inside as well as outside India.

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Who will be the next Prime Minister in India?

Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, while campaigning in UP touched upon only on one theme. That is to remind the voters that Rahul Gandhi is their future! This he did while knowing well (or completely ignorant of the ground realities in the state) that the Congress in UP would finish fourth. That should have been an embarrassing reminder. Yet, no one seems to have been embarrassing. On the contrary, everyone, from the PM down to every other Congress leader had sycophantically sang the theme song of Rahul taking over the mantle from the PM during the next General Elections due in 2009.

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Wheat farmers are becoming assertive!

Yet they need correct market information to get maximum prices!

The wheat procurement season is on and the wheat output is good in Punjab, Haryana and MP and Rajasthan and UP. There is a sort of cold war between the various players in the wheat procurement trade, the government on the one hand and the traditional traders and the newly emergent MNC segment, Cargill, ITC and Glencore, Ruchi and AWB. Every one wants the farmers wheat cheap, the current maximum cost/price for wheat per quintal is Rs.995.

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Its past sins visit its present predicaments?

The Stalinist cult of “collectivized” agriculture, call it by what name you like, that had entrenched the idlers in the villages, panchayats and land holding patterns! Who said agriculture is not important? But the CPM in W.Bengal always touted its land reforms as the end of all socio-economic ills, right? That’s how it started the thoroughly cynical exploitation of the helpless villagers, land owners, tenants and landless labour alike.

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Indian middle class stunned into silence!

Members of the Karnataka Assembly and Legislative Council take exception to his remarks on national anthem and Cauvery water issue. Mr. N.R. Narayanamurthy, the Infosys founder and mentor, had never doubted his luck. He earned his billions, made his name and became an instant middle class icon. The new generation uppies look up to him as their role model and so fashioned their ideals and ideas of a new lifestyle.

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