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Foray BACKBONE
Foray BACKBONE
BACKBONE
Opp in you-first mode
- 19 May 2012
- Hari Shankar Vyas
The Opposition strategy is stuck on one question: Who will take the initiative against the Congress’ Presidential candidate? All Opposition parties are waiting for each other to take the first step. Many feel that the BJP, which is the main opposition party, should take the initiative. However, the party is too busy handling rebellions in Rajasthan and Karnataka to do anything about this other issue.
IPL5 has kept up the news — both good & bad
- 19 May 2012
- Meenakshi Rao
First we had some seldom-heard-before players pompously, and probably even falsely, declaring to a hidden camera that they draw more than their official auction figures.
It’s just not about the cartoon
- 19 May 2012
- Debraj Mookerjee
The brouhaha in Parliament over the Ambedkar cartoon has been widely commented on. Save one member from the National Conference, and Jaswant Singh outside Parliament, Parliament in one voice managed to force the HRD Minister (Harvard returned, but not enlightened enough it seems) to pull out the offending Class IX text by NCERT from the school curricula taught across 15 States. That this was a case of competitive populism is obvious to all. The behaviour of the political class gives cause for serious disquiet. The focus of this piece is not the cartoon itself, or whether or not it is appropriate for school students. It seeks to examine certain underlying facets to the debate.
Most for Pranab
- 12 May 2012
- Hari Shankar Vyas
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is on a roll. All the political parties are trying their best to ensure that he is the next President. Some leaders are even going against their party to support him. Recently, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said that he would not support Pranab as the Presidential candidate. But his party MP Bharatruhari Mahtab walked up to his seat and said that he would love to see him as President and even congratulated him.
Did you cry with Aamir or smirk about the glycerine?
- 12 May 2012
- Meenakshi Rao
Did you cry with Aamir Khan last Sunday? Or did you smirk along with the sceptics? The younger generation, always spooked about overt emotionality and definitely not into crying over anything, could only react with scorn. “It was all about the power of glycerine,” a young one insisted with a strange kind of anger towards the show and its host. The other one could not get over the preach mode that Aamir usually gets besotted with.
Cross-eyed at the examination
- 12 May 2012
- Debraj Mookerjee
The recent fiasco in the University of Delhi’s semester exam is a pointer to a deeper malaise. The defining feature of any bureaucracy is obsession with forms (pun intended).
Slugfest continues
- 05 May 2012
- Hari Shankar Vyas
The Congress and the BJP are at loggerheads on who should be the next President. Many senior leaders were of the opinion that the Congress would hold informal talks with the BJP. It was expected that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee would take the initiative and speak with senior BJP leaders like Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. But it now appears that the Congress has decided it would elect a President of its choice without the support from the Opposition. The Congress wants to send a message that it still wields power.
Aamir’s Satyamev Jayate is a revolution seeking eyeballs
- 05 May 2012
- Meenakshi Rao
Today is the morning Aamir Khan has promised a revolution of sorts on the Indian television — a new experiment that might change the way programmes are conceived and distributed over the airwaves, also perhaps, ushering in the era of content sharing over and above channel boundaries.
It’s not about the economy, stupid
- 05 May 2012
- Debraj Mookerjee
Bill Clinton successfully unseated George Bush senior in 1992 from the US presidency with the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Bush had just ended the Cold War and had overrun Saddam in the Gulf War (1991), and his approval rating was 90 per cent! A year later, Clinton defeated him because he was seen as a better manager of the economy. In India, there is no real fear of the economy going bad. No real fear at least. It seems only the experts are worried. The politicians and the voters are clearly not. Between economic policy framing and welfare spending exists a huge chasm — creating a political void that none has the courage to fill. The basic issue at hand is about mindsets, not economic policy.
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