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

Who could have ever imagined that the biggest bulk order for computers across the globe would be made by one among the BIMARU states in the country? Read more

Of late the national president of the Samajwadi Party Mulayam Singh Yadav has been hobnobbing with Congress patriarch Narain Dutt Tiwari, whose immense wisdom and wit have got overshadowed by all the bad things in the recent past. Read more

Our social values are down in the dumps.

I spent Sunday watching Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Arvind Kejriwal and some scribes in a heated verbal duel over the central grants to an NGO engaged in the distribution of aid to physically disabled people in 17 districts of Uttar Pradesh. Read more

I can’t help but appreciate the attitude of Mayawati. Seven months after she quit the Chief Ministers post after losing 2012 elections to the Yadav family of Uttar Pradesh, she came out of her fortified bungalow as queen bee today to address a mammoth crowd. Read more

Kudos to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for instantly cracking the whip. Without any loss of time, he suspended the IAS officer who had molested a girl on a running train. He even ignored the overwhelming support of the IAS officers’ peers who felt the suspension should have come after a probe. I wonder if they would have taken the same plea had an ordinary person molested a young girl on a running train. Read more

After hearing the non-committal replies of two young leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Choudhary, I am convinced that our political system is too fragile to restrain khaps and their diktats. Read more

A few years back, a senior journalist had done a story on ‘riots in Uttar Pradesh over power shortage’. Many of us had laughed at the report as UP had only witnessed communal riots so far. But it appears his words are coming true now. Read more

The other day I met a senior corporate honcho in Mumbai. He had been to Lucknow and was impressed by the city’s development. Read more

When Rahul Gandhi presented Sam Pitroda as a vishkarma (a backward caste) at a public rally in UP’s backward district Akbarpur during the recent assembly election, the country was amused if not shocked. Read more