Rarely do civil servants stick their necks out to make powerful politicians accountable to law. That’s usually the stuff of which Bollywood scripts are made.
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In Agra this weekend for some personal work, I risked visiting the Taj and Fatehpur Sikri with a friend. I’ve since returned home, almost convinced that in India we know not how to sell tourism.
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Posted by Vinod Sharma on Monday, March 22, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Filed under india · Tagged Agra, cameraman, Durgah of Salim Chisti, Fatehpur Sikri, government staf, rickshaw pullers, three-wheelers, tongawallahs, tourism
Parliament is a forum for debate, not a boxing arena it threatened to become before the passage of the women’s reservation bill in the Rajya Sabha. But who’s to be blamed for the plummeting standards, the government or the Opposition? The Members or Presiding Officers? Read more

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“We feel Saudi Arabia, of course, has a long and close relationship with Pakistan. But that makes Saudi Arabia even a more of a valuable interlocutor for when we tell them about our experience, Saudi Arabia listens as somebody who is not in any way an enemy of Pakistan but a friend of Pakistan, therefore will listen with sympathy and concern to a matter of this nature.”
Can this statement of Shashi Tharoor during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Saudi Arabia be interpreted as invitation for third party intervention by Riyadh in Indo-Pak affairs? Read more

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Posted by Vinod Sharma on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Filed under india · Tagged 1972 Shimla Pact, Indo-Pak affairs, Manmohan Singh, Mujahideen/Taliban regimes, Prime Minister, Saudi Arabia, Shashi Tharoor, sympathy, valuable interlocutor