I always thought Nitish Kumar, like Mulayam Singh Yadav, had an ear to the ground. But I have grown sceptic after watching last week’s developments in Bihar. Read more

The outpouring over Narendra Modi has deluged all other issues, it seems. If you look at Modi’s elevation dispassionately, it is just a development that is having a cascading effect in his own party. Read more

Every Environment Day I am reminded of my visit to Denver in the United States few years back. The day had begun with watching a spectacular ‘Green procession’ by the students and ended with a ‘Green dinner’ at somebody’s sprawling house. Read more

The recent Maoists attack in Chhattisgarh has brought back memories of a frightening experience in a village in Sonebhadra district, bordering the trouble-torn state. Though there is little or no Maoist activity reported from UP villages, there are confirmed reports of the Maoists taking shelter after every bloody strike in Chhattisgarh. Read more

On Wednesday, the day UPA 11 was celebrating completion of four years, Uttar Pradesh was hosting two ambitious conferences. One was on skill development and community colleges, jointly hosted by the British High Commission and the state government, the other was entrepreneurs’ summit addressed by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. Read more

The other day a colleague of mine in Tamil Nadu said, “Amma should become the Prime Minister of the country post 2014 general elections. She has the iron hand to set everything and everyone right in the country brimming with an irrepressible multitude of people and politicians.” Read more

I briefly met Bollywood star Salman Khan here in Lucknow. Initially he looked quite shy, unlike his celluloid image. As the guests in a crowded hall cheered him, girls offering him red roses, he stood tight-lipped. I prodded him to say something, even narrate some dialogue of his new film ‘Ek Tha Tiger’, for whose promotion he was visiting the city. Read more

In somewhat a theatre of the absurd, the mercurial Mohd Azam Khan first fretted over his prolonged frisking at the Boston airport, then fumed at the External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid for manipulating his humiliation by the security officials at Logan airport and now his colleague and cabinet minister Shivpal Singh Yadav has dispatched a letter of sorts to the US President Obama to register the state government’s protest against the treatment meted out to Azam. Read more

I am at my wits end to understand why a man rapes a baby? Is it for sexual gratification? As I started browsing to find an answer, I laid my hands on a report published in The Telegraph which said, “The alleged rape of a nine-month-old baby girl by six men in a remote part of rural South Africa last week has focused the nation on an 80% rise in child sexual abuse over a year, much of it connected with the country’s AIDS pandemic. Read more

An English magazine has aptly described both Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi as ‘Corporate Leaders.’

As Modi hopped from one session to the other organised by India Inc (with Rahul making one appearance), I was really wondering who will decide the fate of their respective political party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Read more