POLITICS
POWER. POLICY. PEOPLE.
Make in India, Gain in America
How the Establishment Is Instigating the Protest
One Law for the Protestors, Another for the Goons...
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Anatomy of a Protester
The youth won't go home. They, the Gen Z, think the government is the one that’s...
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Jeffrey Archer Died Yesterday
He wrote the bestsellers. Life wrote the better draft.Photo: SAGHEER SHAHEEN...
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BJP, Mind the Junkyard: Defector Is Not a Treasure
Two Editors, Two Systems
Tarun Tejpal and M J Akbar: Two of India's most prominent editors, both accused of preying on junior colleagues — and yet almost nothing about the police action, or the outcomes looks the same.
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Democracy's Discomfort with Dynasty: The Case of Jyotiraditya Scindia
After two decades of being one of the Congress's loudest anti-BJP voices vanished the moment Jyotiraditya Scindia switched sides — condemnation became praise. Three generations of switching sides, a family history entangled with 1857, and a politician who still hasn't gotten the memo that Bharat has no maharajas.
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Narendra Modi Is the Most Photographed Enigma
The paradoxes keep piling up, and global commentators keep failing to file him neatly away. He champions aggressive cultural nationalism in one breath and global climate action in the next, mixing high-tech financial inclusion with old-school majoritarian politics. Whatever the verdict, his top-down style keeps absorbing political shocks that would sink lesser leaders — and somehow the electoral momentum never quite stops.Pictures by SAGHEER SHAHEEN.
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Sonia Gandhi: will she deal with real issues in her memoir?
Sonia Gandhi's memoir, I hope, is not merely a well-written treatise thrown as a party with no explanations on the invitation. Will she shed light on some real issues like: why she didn't become the prime minister, her snapping ties with Maneka Gandhi, Ottavio Quattrocchi, her rapport with Manmohan Singh and PV Narasimha Rao, the National Herald case, and that she, perhaps, is a bigger dynast than her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.
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The Immortality Trap
World leaders don't live by ikigai. Power is stressful and demanding; it makes them glow even as it ages them, concealed by top-tier healthcare. Vanity and ambition outlast the person, driving leaders to write histories that cement their legacy. But God doesn't discriminate. Death comes for everyone. It remains the great leveler.
The CJP Paradox: Youth Power, Divided by Ideology and Amplified by Social Media"
The CJP doesn't speak for all of Gen Z. There's a growing political and gender divide: women lean progressive while young men increasingly gravitate toward conservatism. Post-pandemic economic strain and a tough job market have pushed many youths toward right-wing populism, rejecting mainstream social norms.
Arundhati Roy, Ideologically Captured
Arundhati Roy's Blind Spot: A Thief Sees Thieves Everywhere. Compromised writers write their most convincing copy when they're describing someone else's compromises. They'd say this applies to me too, since I'm critical of Arundhati. Okay!
PENGUIN CHICKENS OUT, AGAIN!
The collapsed deal for Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's highly anticipated memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, is part of a trend, Standard fact-checking and editorial review, it seems, have become a convenient pretext for pre-emptive censorship — a way to dodge costly court battles or avoid government ire. Dispensing with moral courage, after all, costs nothing. Any other mainstream publisher would be willing to publish the book as it is, unlike Penguin Random House India .