When I first met Kanshi Ram as a rookie journalist, he had just founded the Bahujan Samaj Party. It was election time in the 1980s and he had no hope in hell of winning even a single seat, despite his sharp focus on Dalit welfare in the country. Read more

Now that Team Anna is contemplating forming a political party, I wonder why Anna Hazare had to go as far as New Delhi to look for a clean government. Read more

I was amused to see Team Anna draw flak this week from two leaders quite on the opposite sides of the spectrum: Sonia Gandhi and Nitish Kumar. While Sonia, whose speech was read out in absentia at a rally in Uttarakhand, seemed quite impatient with the frequent noises being made by the team members, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was simply – and justifiably – peeved at the tendency of the team members to think only they are right and everybody else who has his or her own mind is corrupt. Read more

Now what did I say about Anna Hazare? That he is a loose canon? That he always makes statements and then retracts them? That he adopts positions and then goes back on them? That he never fails to leave his backers with a sense of being let down? Read more

For the first time ever, I have found myself agreeing with a BJP leader. When Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s troubles came from the fact that he was being advised by far too many lawyers, he unerringly hit the nail on the head. Read more