A good friend of mine, who has watched Indian politics from the inner circles of more than one political party, once told me, “The nature of the people in this country is such that they never endorse anyone who openly expresses the desire to become the Prime Minister of India. Read more

It has to be a significant moment in Indian history that, for the first time in the nearly five decades of the Shiv Sena’s existence, Bal Thackeray has been so publicly endorsed by the Congress as one of its own. Read more

As a reporter just coming into my own in the late 1980s, I recall following both then incumbent Prime Minister VP Singh and former PM Rajiv Gandhi rather closely through the series of elections, both Lok Sabha and Assembly, between 1989 and 1991. Read more

For first time in my life, ever, I felt sorry for L K Advani. The elder ’statesman’ of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who has done more for his party than any other leader, including Narendra Modi, does not even have a right to his own ambition? Read more

He preceded M F Husain for his heavenly abode. But it is he, my former colleague, the news editor at the newspaper where I worked at the time, who I blame for Husain’s being eventually hounded out of India. Read more

For all the trolls who go from blog to blog on the Hindustan Times website and label all its editors as Congress stooges or paid journalists, I finally know where they are getting that from. Read more

Rahul Gandhi was not far wrong when he said earlier this week that compulsions of coalition politics were keeping food prices and inflation up. Read more

Sonia Gandhi’s first ever full-blown political rally was in Maharashtra – in the tribal district of Nandurbar. Sharad Pawar was astonished at the numbers the adivasis turned up in to hear Mrs Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law. Read more