In poll-bound Gujarat, the latest slugfest between the Congress and the BJP is over who can do better in building houses for the new influencers in the state’s politics — people in the low income groups riding on the back of rapid urbanisation. Read more

Dear Mr Khan,

It is heartening to see news reports that the government has launched a nationwide campaign against malnutrition amongst children and that you are the ambassador for this noble endeavour. Read more

Every time I go to Bhubaneswar, I end up making queries about land rates, hoping I would be able to buy a plot for my post-retirement housing. But each time I return disappointed. Land prices and housing costs in the city have risen so much that the middle class — for whom Bhubaneswar once was a dream city — has been priced out. Read more

When a ruling party goes for a ministerial reshuffle closer to the end of its tenure, the exercise is often expected to be tailored to the upcoming elections. Such conventional wisdom, however, appeared to be missing when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the biggest-ever cabinet reshuffle of his time on Sunday. Read more

When the UPA government swung into action last week with a slew of economic “reform” measures, parallels were drawn with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 2009 gambit on the India-US nuclear deal. Read more

LK Advani sees neither the Congress nor his own party, BJP, leading the next government in New Delhi. Not many would disagree with that perception, but few in positions such as that of Advani would be willing to say it in public. Read more

Nobody expected the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates in its quarterly monetary policy unveiled on Tuesday. Neither did D. Subbarao spring any surprise. The RBI governor, however, sounded unusually alarmist and helpless, as he sharply slashed the GDP growth forecast for 2012-13 from 7.3% to 6.5% and warned that high inflation was here to stay for many more months. Read more

This monsoon season we are likely to get up to 10% less rain than a normal year, according to the latest indications from the Met department. If that shortfall was evenly spread across the country, the impact on the nation’s agricultural output and the farmers would have been limited. Read more

As I write this blog, I can see at least five stories on rape, violence against women and child abuse, among others, making up the news list on a day when there hasn’t been much action in the nation’s capital to report. Read more

Speculation has it that Congress President Sonia Gandhi will likely charm Trinamool firebrand Mamata Banerjee into supporting the UPA’s candidate for the next president. And as of now, our dear Pranabda remains a frontrunner for Raisina Hills. Read more