Last week I heard with interest Rahul Gandhi, as the newly appointed vice president of his party, call for the identification of 40 to 50 people in the Congress in each state who could be leaders -potential chief ministers and prime ministers. Read more

In 1995, when the Congress was pushed below the majority mark in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance was struggling to cop up one of their own, Sharad Pawar, the sitting chief minister, well, just sat back and did nothing. Read more

The Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena like to believe that the Mangeshkar sisters belong to them. In fact, not just belong to them – the Thackerays believe that they own these national assets. Read more

During his first term as chief minister of Maharashtra, I had once quizzed Vilasrao Deshmukh about the general feeling of critics that his was a lack-lustre government that was really incapable of doing anything significant for the people. Read more

I was sitting in the middle of the road, atop my brand new leaf-green VIP suitcase, just outside the gates of the Indian Airlines office in Tezpur, where the airlines bus had deposited me just a few minutes ago, and not knowing where to go from there when I spotted a few men carrying daos and some old-fashioned bows and arrows making their way towards me. Read more

When Sharad Pawar split the Congress in 1999, he had hoped that the whole of the party will rally behind him and that Sonia Gandhi will be just left with herself and a handful of her close supporters. Read more

Noticed a little but not much commented upon earlier this year was the fact that for the first time in a decade or more, the BJP had lost its Ayodhya seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. Now the party has lost a graduates’ seat from the Konkan which it had held for 40 years in the Maharashtra Legislative Council. Read more

I was shocked the other day to hear Mani Shankar Aiyar of the Congress describe Anna Hazare as a Frankenstein’s monster. Read more

So who’s afraid of Anna Hazare?

No one except, perhaps, the Congress, I must say. And if at all the Hissar byelection results go in favour of the party, then perhaps no more after that. 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