In a week full of really spectacular news on the infrastructure front ‘the resolution of the Narmada fasts, the clearance of the Bangalore-Mysore expressway, the resurrection of the first dormant unit of the Dabhol power plant and the Delhi high court’s dismissal of the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Airport Developers’ petition against the award of the...
This is a story from the summer of 1996 that I had salted away for my memoirs, but am tempted to tell now because it may have some relevance to the muddying politics of these times. I do, however, seek forgiveness if any of the eminent cast of characters still prefers that the story isn’t...
If we’re as sensitive to Shinde’s needs as the Pentagon was to Romero’s, we’d save many lives The unexpectedly large response to ‘It’s not about saving Pvt Ryan’ (National Interest, IE, March 29) is generally evenly divided. The article struck a positive chord with most Indian readers, and many of those who wrote back in...
The vanishing act in Shimla The lingering image of the week is not Pervez Musharraf in his black sherwani reciting the oath as president. It is, on the contrary, Tourism and Culture Minister Ananth Kumar and Ratan Tata posing in front of a Taj Mahal portrait at the ceremony to hand over the monument to...
You don’t need Stephen Hawking’s intellect to figure out the many awful things that could have happened to him if he had been born in India. First of all, all his creativity and genius would have been crushed under the collective weight of the corruption, politicking and skulduggery so common at our scientific institutions. Then,...
Try a daytime cruise on the Hooghly for a crash course in Left economics. On each bank, you see an endless row of dead, emptied-out shells of factories where chimneys ceased to burn years ago. The buildings bring to mind a different era altogether and, if you are old enough to remember, the 1960s Bollywood...