Jab tawaqqo hi uth gaee Ghalib/ Kyun kisee ka gila kare koee.” I have been criticised for demanding Bharat Ratna for Mirza Ghalib and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Some even lampooned me by saying that Bharat Ratna should also be given to Lord Rama and Gautam Buddha, and Param Vir Chakra to Tantia Tope. In reply, I wish to say that there is nothing wrong in giving awards posthumously, provided they are given to the right persons, and Bharat Ratna has been often conferred posthumously in the past, for instance to Sardar Patel and Dr Ambedkar.

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union and its red empire, one minor principality of that empire, West Bengal, has also fallen. A post-election analysis by Brinda Karat shows how blind the CPM is to why first the Soviet Union and now West Bengal have fallen. British imperialists claimed they were civilizing lesser breeds. Red imperialists also claimed to be uplifting those lacking revolutionary consciousness.

A list of 50 most-wanted terrorists that India was hoping to use to pressure Pakistan has ended up deeply embarrassing the country. It turns out that at least two people on the list that Delhi alleged were fugitives from Indian law and being sheltered in Pakistan, are in fact in India. India handed over the list to Pakistan during home secretary-level talks in March.

While the Indian electorate may not be entirely ready to jettison dynastic politics, Kanimozhi's arrest and the Bhatta-Parsaul episode concerning Rahul Gandhi convey the urgency of doing so. It may not be enough that M.Karunanidhi's DMK has been vanquished in the assembly elections or that the Nehru-Gandhis are becoming fading stars. The sooner these and other political dynasties are pushed to oblivion, the better for India.

India must hasten the process of combat aircraft acquisition to meet the dual challenge posed by Pakistan and its ‘all weather’ friend China. At a time when the credibility of the Manmohan Singh regime lies in tatters, thanks to the scandal-a-day allegations of corruption that it faces, the recent announcement of the Government, narrowing the list of qualified bidders, on the acquisition of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft has, happily, not invited any accusations of corruption, cronyism or nepotism. This is unquestionably because of the impeccable reputation for honesty and probity that Defence Minister AK Antony enjoys in India and abroad.

US-Pakistan relations have taken a nose dive following the May 2 US military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. US patience with Pakistan is wearing thin, as evidenced by remarks US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made following meetings with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on Friday. Clinton called on Pakistan to take decisive action against the terrorist networks on its soil and lamented that anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories.

The success of our policies of reservation should be judged not by their focus on provision of opportunity but on whether they deliver equality of outcomes. The spate of recent suicides by Dalit students studying at leading educational institutions calls for introspection.

In its 70th anniversary year the CBI is not exactly covering itself with glory. Rather, seminal questions are being asked of its role in Indian policing, and whether the cancer which is eating away its entrails has rendered the once-proud investigative organisation moribund. 2011 will always be remembered as one of the worst years in the 70-year history of the Central Bureau of Investigation which began its career in 1941 as the Special Police Department with the task of probing cases of bribery and corruption in transactions with the War & Supply Department during World War II.

India won't brook a McCarthy to bludgeon the organised Left, but it is hurtling towards the precipice anyway due to its own fallacies and decline of its ideological appeal. As an ex-Communist, any critique I make of the Left runs the risk of being dismissed as the rant of a renegade. However, today the number of ex-Communists in the world probably exceeds that of the remaining faithful, which is why Communist parties would do well to analyse why so many have deserted their ranks.

The police attack on Baba Ramdev’s anti-black money campaigners in New Delhi’s historic Ramlila maidan will have the short-term impact of strengthening the Jan Lokpal movement of Anna Hazare. Its long-term effect would be to bolster coalition forces against the authoritarian Congress and the Manmohan Singh government, whose chief beneficiary, by default, will be the BJP/NDA.

The circumstances of Osama bin Laden’s location and death have sharply worsened relations between the US and Pakistan but also reminded Americans of their lack of options in dealing with that country. Indeed, if the Pakistanis can persuade China to increase aid, then Islamabad may turn out to have wider options than Washington.

Performance of exports in 2010-11 has been a remarkable achievement of the Indian economy. Against a target of $200 billion, actual export turnover stood at over $245 billion, exceeding the target by 22.5%.

Indian democracy is a photocopy of British democracy. Is it reasonable to hope, therefore, that basic changes in the structure of British democracy will inspire some desperately needed reforms in Indian democracy as well? Probably not, because we no longer have influence wielders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, the “last Englishman” in India. But at the least we might take note of the winds of change slowly wafting across the British isles. 

The past week was replete with the abounding folly of those who profess to lead and should know better. Karnataka Governor H R Bhardwaj set the ball rolling by recommending President’s Rule in the state following a Supreme Court order that reinstated 16 MLAs, including 11 from the BJP and five Independents, who had been disqualified by the Speaker a few months ago and thus saved B S Yeddyurappa from defeat in a straightforward vote of confidence. 

The UPA will be making a gross miscalculation if it considers the goodness of Kannadigas as a weakness and persists with HR Bhardwaj as Governor. Going by the conduct of Karnataka Governor HR Bhardwaj over the last one year, there should be no doubt that the present occupant of the Raj Bhawan in Bangalore has turned it into a den of intrigue and mischief and has become the biggest destabiliSer of the Constitutional arrangement and the democratic process in the State.

Despite progress made by China in using the RMB as a settlement currency, its internationalization can go awry. Recently, HSBC Bank released an upbeat survey predicting that China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB), will become one of three global settlement currencies (alongside the dollar and euro) sometime this year.

One of the painfully revealing episodes in Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father" describes his early experience listening to a sermon by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Among the things said in that sermon was that "white folks' greed runs a world in need." Obama was literally moved to tears by that sermon.

The Rana-Headley case has underscored the importance of India working with the US for accessing actionable intelligence and keeping pressure on Pakistan. But the strategy is not without constraints as American and Indian interests in Pakistan have a limited congruence. Shorn of the verbiage and detail, the information that is now becoming available through the Rana-Headley trial in the US into the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai makes one conclusion inevitable.

The proposed Jan Lokpal Bill has evoked strong reactions, a number of them emotionally charged. One is struck by the conflicting claims and counter-claims in the media. While it’s hard to determine the truth in such matters, a summary of some of the misgivings and the possible intentions, with an assessment of what possibly is the reality, follows:

A new broom sweeps clean, as the saying goes. Hence the commendable idealism with which Ms Mamata Banerjee requested the Speaker of West Bengal’s Legislative Assembly to “give more importance to the Opposition”. That, as well as her pledge to democracy and not party rule, should usher in a period of political harmony, notwithstanding stray signs of Trinamool Congress-Left Front conflict.

The most convenient understanding of the phenomenon of Pakistani extremists that one hears being echoed from TV studios and their favourite ‘guests’ suggests that young Pakistanis turning into religious fanatics has something to do with illiteracy and unemployment. Though not entirely incorrect, this notion however is a complacent explanation.

Why have the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) performed below potential? Jairam Ramesh may have said it baldly but Kapil Sibal's comb over is hardly convincing. In 1946, the IITs were just a twinkle in the eye of Ardeshir Dalal, a colonial official. But from then on till they were actually set up post-Independence, the IITs were always meant for training and research. 

India and Pakistan on Monday began talks aimed at demilitarising the Siachen glacier, with Defence Secretaries of both countries leading delegations. The talks will continue on Tuesday. While there is no official word on day one of the 12th round of talks on the issue, Defence Ministry sources maintained that the approach of both sides on the contentious issue was “constructive and positive.”

Not very long ago, I received a letter which left me perplexed. The letter contained an offer for the purchase of a school. People have from time to time tried to sell me all kinds of things, from used air-conditioners to homeopathic treatment for hair loss, but I did not even know that there was a trade in the sale and purchase of schools. The letter in question was addressed to me by name.

For the past few months — even before the Abbottabad operation, the Mehran attack and the testimony of David Coleman Headley in a Chicago court — there has been mounting international concern over the state of Pakistan. The tendency of the Pakistan establishment to “look both ways” on terrorism was always a perennial source of worry. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Bruce Reidel’s recently-published Deadly Embrace.

The UPA government's unwillingness to act against the abuse of political and corporate power has created a vacuum which others are rushing to fill. Like millions of others across India, I have spent the past week repelled by the spectacle of a weak government entering into improbable contortions over the naive and somewhat bizarre demands of Baba Ramdev. And when the “toughness” followed in the early hours of Sunday.

The events surrounding the spate of corruption scams in the country makes me recall pop-star Britney Spears’ year 2000 hit Oops, I did it again! If the plot plays out to script, Dayanidhi Maran could well be the next fall guy, but the moot point would remain pretty much the same and the polity would still beggar the question — what is it in the governance code of the Congress that so much worm crawls from the Cabinet each time it hits the Lok Sabha with a comfortable majority?

Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar must be regretting the fact that he petitioned the Supreme Court against the Union government for keeping his mercy petition pending for nearly eight years. A Khalistani terrorist sentenced to death by in August 2001 for his role in crimes committed in 1991 and 1993, Bhullar had sought presidential pardon in 2003. But along with 27 other such petitions, his papers had been gathering dust in North Block all these years. 

The emergence of Baba Ramdev as the newest anti-corruption crusader, after Anna Hazare, has unsettled the midsummer complacency of the Congress-inclined Establishment. If the man BJP president Nitin Gadkari cheekily dubbed the “rockstar of yoga” can extend his energies beyond wellness and simple patriotism — the two recurrent themes of his discourses — where, it is being asked, will the process stop?

Crony capitalism has been in the spotlight because of the 2G telecom scam, mining scams and real estate scams like Satyam. Apart from corruption, crony capitalism can help entrenched oligarchs to shut out talented newcomers lacking political contacts. Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post wrote, in a recent article on India, that “much of the formal economy is controlled by a handful of family-run conglomerates that are quick to use their political and financial muscle to move into any sector that shows promise.

"Once upon a time, there was a king..." Haven't we all grown up listening to such stories? I don't think any of us read stories that went – "Once upon a time, there was a democracy, with elected representatives who were answerable to the people through the electoral process, the courts and the Lokpal." We know the first line well. We don't know how it works in the second line at all. Therein lies the problem in pushing through the Lokpal Bill. 

Kaushik Basu’s proposal of legalising bribery may not prevent the next big scam. But it has underlined the need for creative thinking to address social ills. Kaushik Basu is easily the most distinguished economist to occupy the position of chief economic advisor in modern memory. And it shows. He invites us (as a nation) to think of economic ideas as things to be discussed and debated.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, says an ancient proverb. This is what comes to mind in the context of the Government's unprovoked resort to Operation No-Holds-Barred in the early hours of June 5 against Baba Ramdev and his followers at the Ramlila maidan. While creating an impression of responding to the call of the Baba against corruption and black money, the Government had already drawn up a full-fledged Orbat for neutralising the Baba. 

India’s law minister announced last week that the right to privacy would be made a fundamental right in the Constitution. The motion is likely to be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament. The recent use of electronic surveillance techniques by investigating bodies and news channels has been the trigger behind the move. Most definitions of privacy refer to the individual’s claim to “be left alone” and to control the extent to which he mixes with others.

Have we learned any lessons from the Headley disclosures of Pakistani involvement in the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai? Are we now more determined than before to take on Pakistan? Or are we still dependent on others to plead our case and send bogus dossiers to Pakistan? The world will take note of India if New Delhi sends out a firm message: Thus far and no farther. That calls for political courage.

The entire world is watching as Indians attempt to purge India of corruption using classically Indian means of protest. Hindutva and Sanatana Dharma represent the only viable cures to the cancer of corruption which is destroying the entrails of our civilisation.

We, the People, who had given to ourselves the Constitution guaranteeing the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and to assemble peaceably and without arms, have been meekly submitting during the entire period the Constitution has been in force to the peremptory dictate of the governments elected by us, as sovereign masters, to obtain prior police permission every time we want to hold any meeting in a public place.

Your interview on Doordarshan to justify the brutal crackdown at Ramlila maidan —timed to perfection with Anna's fast at Rajghat —raised more questions than it answered. Sir, why do you suddenly seem to be the greatest opponent of the Jan Lokpal bill?

The time has come for mid-term polls which could usher in a government headed by a Prime Minister by right and not on sufferance who could acquire the required moral and political authority and assert it effectively in the interest of the nation.

Exaggerating minor acts of vandalism and portraying them as issues related to free speech despite such acts of vandalism not being state-sanctioned makes a mockery of the concept of the right to free speech. Nor should Hindus be criticised for contesting misleading claims by liberal journalists by posting their comments on the Internet. For that would be an assault on free speech.

It is down by nearly 5% since the beginning of 2011, matching the lowest level plumbed since the Bretton Woods system of pegged exchange rates collapsed in 1973. An obvious explanation for this weakness is the US Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rate policy, which encourages investors to shift from dollars to higher-yielding foreign assets.

Continuing leaks from US sources paint the chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the director-general of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, as being on the defensive after the arrest of informants within the army’s ranks and others linked to it who ratted on Osama’s whereabouts.

Baba Ramdev's financial naivete is only to be expected. But I am astonished that the media endlessly repeats the myth that enormous hoards of black money are lying in Swiss banks.

What does Planning Commission do, and do we need it? Forget that. On Planning Commission's website, I couldn't even find information on how much the country spends on the commission. Through Budget papers, you will discover that in 2011-12, we will spend Rs 92.98 crore on the commission. Each of the eight members warrants a cost-to-company expenditure of at least Rs 2 lakh a month, if not more.

A few days ago an Indian newspaper ran pictures from the GQ Best Dressed Men Awards. They wrote a small blurb, listed out all the big name celebs and socialites who attended. The only thing they neglected to mention was GQ. Instead the event was referred to opaquely as a “men’s magazine award”.

What do you suppose the chances are of this being the coldest June since records began, or maybe the dampest June since records began? My guess is that it will almost certainly be the most dramatic of some climatic variation since records began; paradoxically, every other month is.

The UPA has suddenly become conscious of the need to take the Opposition into confidence for two reasons: One, the Government’s version of the Lok Pal Bill cannot get through Parliament without its support, and two, it wants to diffuse public discontent over its destructive conduct across the political spectrum. Civil society, instead of being obdurate, should consider seeking support from the UPA's political rivals.

The origin and history of Pakistan has been of relentless hostility towards India. Within weeks of Independence, Pakistan invaded Kashmir on October 22, 1947. Since then, it has launched repeated invasions of India. For the last three decades Pakistan has been carrying out cross-border terrorism.

A virtually unheard-of occurrence for college admissions in Delhi University made headlines and unleashed shock waves this summer: a leading college demanded a score of 96 to 100 per cent for entrance to an honours degree in commerce. Was this fantasy, a joke or a case of examination marks keeping pace with price inflation?

There is a theory that the Congress party has decided to outsource the PMO to a trusted loyalist. But which loyalist can be trusted so much?

Policymakers assure the nation that once the rains are normal and harvests bountiful, inflation will come down. Barely a few days ago a senior official of the Reserve Bank told the media that prices would come down if, among other things, food shortages eased.

Contrary to what sceptics often assert, the case for free trade is robust. It extends not just to overall prosperity (or "aggregate GNP"), but also to distributional outcomes, which makes the free-trade argument morally compelling as well.

When the basic structure of the Constitution denies the Prime Minister immunity from prosecution, how could it be argued that the office should not be brought under the scrutiny of the Lokpal?

You can’t teach new tricks to an old dog. That is one message from the latest meeting of the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group that regulates the international commerce in nuclear technology and material. The other is that the non-proliferation ayatollahs in Washington and beyond mouth the mantra of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) even when it has no meaning in the real world.

You know the easiest way to dodge a bullet? Say the following magic words: “It’s not about me, it’s about the institution.” When on Wednesday Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met the five newspaper editors, it was very clear that it wasn’t his idea that he should be hanging out with the journalists.

It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.

Much ink has been spilt in recent days and months attempting to diagnose the extravagant failure of the UPA government to deliver the much-needed second-generation economic reforms since the alliance returned to power in 2009. Freed from the clutches of its Left Front allies who had stymied reforms from 2004, it was widely expected that it would forge ahead with the reforms programme after the ruling coalition had its hands untied. That, as we now know, did not happen.

The entire debate on the lokpal bill has, unfortunately, become concentrated on the inclusion of the prime minister, members of Parliament and the higher judiciary in the ambit of the lokpal. These are vital issues, but not the only ones. Where does the common man go, for instance, when junior functionaries extort and do not deliver?

The recent Supreme Court order on black money is really good news. It suggests that unrestrained and uncalled-for action by the SC in areas where it has little expertise has peaked. Let me explain.

SIX years ago today, on July 7, 2005, Islamist suicide bombers attacked London’s transit system. They blew up three subway trains and a bus, killing 52 people and leaving a nation groping for answers. In one sense the meaning of 7/7 is as clear to Britons as that of 9/11 is to Americans.

The appointment last week of France’s finance minister, Christine Lagarde, as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) brings an end to a race which, for all its illusions of drama and contest, was in fact entirely predictable.

The so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the World Bank and the IMF, set up in the New Hampshire town of that name by the Allied Powers of World War II in 1944 — have long rested on a cosy deal within the Western world, under which the former would always be headed by an American and the latter by a West European.

The judiciary is not an op-ed page contributor or a JNU post-graduate in post-colonial studies. Last heard, the job of judges is to deliver verdicts in specific court cases and to pass orders. The practice of making commentaries to nudge parties into action or to discourage them from taking unlawful action is a supplement rather than the main task at hand.

There are some things in common between the eruption of Mount Murdoch in Britain over the News of The World (NoTW) phone hacking saga and the Niira Radia quake in India with the 2G scam as its epicentre. For starters, both have been great disaster tourism attractions for almost all of us sitting in the amphitheatres of our living rooms and seeing the mighty fall.

With the Kashmiri American Council being unmasked as an ISI-funded operation in the US, Left-liberal intellectuals in India who have benefited from Ghulam Nabi Fai's hospitality stand exposed as collaborators of those engaged in undermining our national interest and inflicting damage to our nation's unity and integrity. This unhappy trend can only be countered by a robust Right-of-Centre intelligentsia.

Indian journalists and intellectuals who participated in all-expenses-paid conferences organised by the ISI-funded Kashmiri American Council in the US must make a full disclosure. They owe it to their country and the people. There are two aspects to l’affaire Fai, the case relating to the arrest last week and the proposed prosecution of Ghulam Nabi Fai, head of the Washington, DC-based Kashmiri American Council on the charge of working as an agent of influence of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

At the strategic level, however, neither New Delhi nor Washington appears to be any closer to answering the critical question: where would they like to see this strategic partnership 50 years from now?

The honest truth is that neither the TV channels who are shrieking with excitement nor the politicians who are insisting that Yeddyurappa is a bribe-taker have the faintest idea whether the case against the Chief Minister was so conclusive as to warrant resignation. All that exists in the public domain so far are ‘leaked’ extracts of the report and Hegde’s own verbal summary of the report to the media in Bengaluru last week.

Consider five facts. First, in 2006, the PM agreed to keep pricing out of the GoM. Second, in 2007, he failed to resolve differences between the telecom and law ministers over how to allocate spectrum. Third, again in 2007, he was either unaware of or ignored  the fact that both the finance secretary and finance minister were pushing for an auction instead of first-come-first-serve.

India A is like a middle-European country. Access to education and opportunity is widespread. “A” citizens (A’s) are driven in nice cars, live in relative comfort and own smartphones. They vacation abroad, eat out often and rarely take trains. They have PAN (permanent account number) cards, demat accounts and Internet connections.

The world economy is reeling under the burden of rising government debt in OECD countries. I predict that the main way out will eventually be inflation. Huge monetary stimuli in many countries have already created the potential for inflation. And, given the political difficulties politicians face in either raising taxes or cutting spending, the most likely way to tame rising debt/GDP ratios seems to be inflation. 

The recent downgrade of the United States sovereign credit rating by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has left many people speechless. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has likened S&P’s attitude to that of “a young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan”.

Islamist spokesmen and leaders of the revived Islamist mainstream, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood and groups akin to it, are bending over backwards to give reassurances that they will promote a peaceful, pluralistic and tolerant version of Islam. The rights of women and religious and ethnic minorities will be respected, they say, and the people’s democratic verdict will be accepted if they lose elections. Many liberals still think the Islamists, however mild they sound today, are bent on taking over in the long run, would abandon democracy once they got into power and would use every sort of violence to achieve their goal.

The 17-Point Agreement, through which Lhasa bowed to Beijing’s sovereignty on May 23, 1951, was India’s capitulation more than Tibet’s. After the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet in October 1950 and destroyed the Tibetan army, India’s army chief, General K M Cariappa declared that India could spare no more than a battalion (800 men) to block the Chinese invasion alongside the Tibetans. Then New Delhi refused to back Lhasa’s request for the United Nations to adopt a resolution against the Communist invasion.

Had reservation been based not on caste but on income — for instance, for all BPL families — practically no Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe would have been excluded, but the profile of beneficiaries would have changed every generation.

In August 2010 — that is, exactly a year ago — Rahul Gandhi told a group of tribals in Orissa that he would be their soldier in New Delhi. There is no record of his having acted on that promise. The Dongria Konds of Niyamgiri forgotten, his attention has more recently been focused on the Jats of Noida, and other such groups that might help the Congress make a strong showing in the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Perhaps, the least noticed but biggest threat to Indian maritime security could come from the Chinese plan to build a deep sea port at Sonadia Island in Bangladesh. This strategically-located facility could in the long run provide China an easy access to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Perhaps it could make good the Chinese plan to drop — for time being — the much touted project for a naval base at Gwadar in Pakistan.

Viewed from across the seven seas, the struggle of Anna Hazare against corruption has all the drama of a TV soap. For an Indian living abroad it also provokes mixed feelings of pride and concern. There is pride because once again we are proving to the world how very different we are from the rest. Unlike the protests and the revolutions of the Arab Spring, ours has fortunately not witnessed any violence; at least not yet. Anna Hazare himself has taken pains to point out that his fast and the people’s protest will be strengthened by its peaceful content.

I was in the room in Mumbai last Tuesday when Ratan Tata claimed that India has become more corrupt than before. Tata is cribbing, merely because from cornering licenses, he is expected to wangle contracts and manipulate the conditionalities. Else, he loses business. What’s illegal about the referee raising the bar and changing a few rules?

One of the major efforts of the UPA 2 and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to improve relations with Pakistan. But the worrying question here is whether friendship with Pakistan is possible, given its history and its foreseeable future. Three issues stand out here. First, the foundations on which Pakistan was created. Second, the Kashmir factor and, finally, the current and future situation in Pakistan to the extent we can foresee it.

Post 9/11, we thought we could ‘outsource’ our terror related problems to America. It had already come to our help politically during the Kargil war. Now, as a fellow victim, it should have even greater empathy with our plight as the world’s single largest sufferer from terror. So we naively assumed that in a reverse ‘BPO’ operation, America would put its brains and brawn to our benefit too when it takes on the Af-Pak terror machine.

Dr Subbarao, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has outlined five principles for policymaking. How does he, and his ultra-hawkish monetary policy, stack up against his own principles? Let us find out. The first principle is that “people matter”. Presumably that means that both growth and inflation matters: the latter because it hurts purchasing power, and the former because it hurts jobs.

After his 12-day fast on the lokpal issue, social activist Anna Hazare has made a call for giving the voters the right to reject elected candidates either by negative voting or using a right to recall law. Such options require very important reforms in our electoral system as well as in political parties.

The new conventional wisdom on 9/11: We have created a decade of fear. We overreacted to 9/11 — al-Qaeda turned out to be a paper tiger; there never was a second attack — thereby bankrupting the country, destroying our morale and sending us into national decline. The secretary of defense says that al-Qaeda is on the verge of strategic defeat. True.

Much has been written about Anna's pals (Team Anna), people (the "movement") and people's pal (civil society) - as also a semi-translation of the last: Lokpal. However, some facets have not evoked the depth of attention that they deserve. Certainly, Anna was little-known outside his home state when his protest began at Jantar Mantar; nor is he a particularly charismatic leader or a great orator.

The Indian media has devoted a great deal of space and air time on the revelations from the hundreds of cables that were put on the internet by Julian Assange and Co. What is it that fascinates about the information? There are the odd comments on people and their foibles, but maybe it is the frank mirror they show to our society that's so engaging. Or, it is the perverse thrill of reading something that was not meant for our eyes, the kind you get when you read someone else's mail or eavesdrop on a conversation.

Parliament, to some extent, is supreme in a democracy but the government is not - it has to rule according to the will of the people. It is one thing to turn down the demands by a group of people and another to term such demands as undemocratic. Under our constitutional scheme, people have been placed on a higher pedestal than the institutions of democracy. The mode of protest by Anna may be wrong but it is important not to undermine the rights of people who had joined the movement in their own right.

How do dictators survive? They tell lies. Muammar Gaddafi was one of the biggest liars of all time. He claimed that his people loved him. He also controlled the flow of information to his people to prevent any alternative narrative taking hold. Then the simple cellphone enabled people to connect. The truth spread widely to drown out all the lies that the colonel broadcast over the airwaves. “So why are democracies failing at the same time? The simple answer: democracies have also been telling lies.”

Shortly after he ended his fast at Delhi’s Ramlila Grounds, Anna Hazare announced his future plans. He was going to demand electoral reforms —  including the right to recall an elected representative and the right to reject all candidates. He was going to fight for farmers and industrial labour. Finally, he was going to push for changes in the education system. “Many people have commercialised education,” Hazare said, “they have opened shops. Children of poor people also should get education. This sector also needs reforms.”

Belgium has been without a government for a record 450 days but has managed to grow all the same. Can the absence of government be a boon? The term “anarchy” tends to be associated with war-torn nations in lawless parts of the developing world, rather than the genteel, waffle-scented environs of a prosperous western European country like Belgium. Yet, taken in its literal sense of the absence of government, Belgium – which has been unable to form a government for over 450 days (a world record) – is as anarchic as it gets.

Put it this way: When the anniversary articles come to be written on 11 September 2031, will commentators look back on a 30 years war against Islamist terrorism, comparable to the cold war, as the defining feature of world politics since 2001? I think not. They will most likely see this longer period as being defined by the historic power shift from west to east, with a much more powerful China and a less powerful United States, a stronger India and a weaker European Union.

What is important here is how the US adapted its processes, procedures, psyche, and performance, to a threat that was live, daily, and extremely adaptable. In the last 10 years, it has been the US winning the race, rather than Al-Qaeda determining the course of action. Which is really the reverse of what has been happening in India. Ramzi Yousef learnt a vital lesson in 1993, and had Al-Qaeda change the nature of the attack in 2001. In India nobody seems to be learning anything from the terror attacks that frequent this country more than any other in the world, sans Pakistan, probably. Against all terror manuals and tactics, those attacking India are able to repeat their actions, virtually unchallenged, on targets that are themselves glaring to the eye.

Obama's lethal record against the al-Qaeda reflects continuity with Bush's counterterrorism push, albeit with a different strategy. On Sunday, for the first time, U.S. President Barack Obama and the former President, George W. Bush, stood together at the site of the September 11 attacks, listening as family members read the names of lost love ones and bowing their heads in silence to mark the moment the planes hit.

As he heads this week to New York for the annual jamboree at the United Nations, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a problem — the diminishing credibility of his government at home and abroad. “Reputation”, of a nation in general and its leadership in particular, is an intangible but important element in the conduct of international relations. Until very recently, Dr Singh derived much mileage as the man who launched India on the path of economic rise in the early 1990s.

The United States is going through difficult times. Its post-2008 recovery has slowed, and some observers fear that Europe’s financial problems could tip the American and world economy into a second recession. American politics, moreover, remains gridlocked over budgetary issues, and compromise will be even more difficult on the eve of the 2012 election, when Republicans hope that economic problems will help them unseat President Barack Obama.

Are Indians becoming progressively less honest? When I voiced the thought to my friend Bidhu Mohanty, who is now director general of Income Tax (Investigation), he went a step farther to wonder if the phrase “business ethics” isn’t a contradiction in terms! It’s not the lurid scams that prompt suspicion but ordinary events. Look at the figures of taxpayers. With 311 million people, the US has 144 million (46.3 per cent of the total) assessees. Only 2.5 per cent (25 million) of a billion Indians file returns.

An ancient maxim states that those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. The UPA, it would seem, doesn’t require divine intervention blessed as it is with a self-destruct button. In a span of less than 72 hours, headline events provided India ample proof this week to support the hypothesis.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been made to stoop. But has he conquered? This is the question impartial observers in the Congress were asking themselves as Mukherjee read out his “statement” in the 2G spectrum issue: that it was officers who believed, not he, that if then finance Minister P Chidambaram had acted, the telecom scam might have been averted. It was officers who said so in the note that was sent to the Prime Minister’s Office at the insistence of officers in the Prime Minister’s Office (emphasis added).

India’s nutritional indicators are terrible. Child malnutrition, anaemia and vitamin deficiency are among the worst in the world. However, in NSSO surveys only 2% of Indians say they don’t get enough to eat. Malnutrition is a bigger problem than hunger. The populist notion that everybody is entitled to subsidized food is wrong. Why on earth should Mukesh Ambani and Ratan Tata have such entitlements?

Our high commission in Colombo organised a concert tour last week in Sri Lanka by the skilled Carnatic musician TM Krishna. What made the tour different was that it was not confined to Colombo with an echo appearance in Kandy, but took the artiste to Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Vavuniya that have been benumbed by war and needed the release that can only be provided by music.

After three successful ballistic missile tests during the past fortnight, the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) is finalising preparations for the big one. In December, the giant Agni-5 missile will blast off from Wheeler Island, on the Orissa coast, travelling its full range of 5,000 km to a target in the southern Indian Ocean. Agni-5 is debuting with a full-range test for two reasons. First, so that there is no question about how far it can strike. Second, to test not just the missile, but also whether the DRDO’s monitoring networks can cope with such enormous ranges, tracking the Agni-5 every moment en route to a target 5,000 km away.

he Congress is suffering from the hammer blows of ambition on the anvil of power. The BJP has a splitting headache in expectation of power. The first is serious. The second is silly. Indian politics is aghast at the extraordinary sight of leaders with long experience of office, like P. Chidambaram and Narendra Modi, struck by this non-partisan disease called impatience, with a subsidiary side-effect known as petulance. Chidambaram is affected by a deliberate loss of memory at a press conference; while Modi cannot recall the dates of the BJP national committee meeting.

India has traditionally defined its security perimeter as stretching from “Aden to Malacca”. It was a framework that was first articulated during the British Raj, when the undivided subcontinent provided security across the Indian Ocean. In recent years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, have reclaimed that tradition by invoking the strategic metaphor “Aden to Malacca”.

Whether you agree with their demand or not, there is no denying the extraordinary commitment on display across Telangana. Lakhs of government servants have been on a strike for over a month, suffering loss of pay and ruining their Dussehra. Given the Centre's prolonged consultations and deliberations, the agitators are likely to miss out on Diwali too. Their bid to intensify the agitation with a rail blockade has prompted the Andhra Pradesh government to come up with tough measures.

Of the many memorable photos that have been published since Steve Jobs died, the most poignant was in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The picture itself wasn’t anything special. This was just a head shot of Jobs staring out, with rimless glasses, aquiline nose, receding hairline and intense brown eyes. It mesmerised because of its juxtaposition to a head shot of Jandali, Jobs’s 80-year-old biological father, who stared out with the same rimless glasses, aquiline nose, receding hairline and intense brown eyes.

With the Tel-ang-ana que-stion rea-ching a climactic stage it is necessary to examine the implication of carving out small states for issues such as reservations in general and the OBC reservations in particular. Dr B.R. Ambedkar argued for small states and a strong Centre to put a check on feudal upper caste forces in the states. But he could not succeed in convincing the Centre, even when it was headed by the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a progressive man of that time, to grant reservations to OBCs.

The Indian media display certain defects. These should ideally be addressed and corrected in a democratic manner. But if the media prove incorrigible, harsh measures may be called for. The time has come when some introspection by the Indian media is required. Many people, not only those in authority but even ordinary people, have started saying that the media have become irresponsible and wayward, and need to be reined in.

The end of Qadhafi does not absolve the U.S. and NATO of the responsibility of avoiding a difficult situation in Libya. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's flight path from Tripoli to Kabul this week should have given the U.S. administration some reason to reflect on how to ensure that the U.S.' mistakes in Afghanistan are not repeated in Libya.

The 2012 Uttar Pradesh election boulder has started to roll and it's Mayawati who is first off the block. Come to think of it, she's the only one off the block. While folks in Delhi are busy chatting and tweeting about the 'monstrosity of self-adulation' that is the Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida, the multi-crore rupee park has put the UP chief minister up there for all to see - something that you can't say for the rest of the fray.

The essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” by indologist A K Ramanujan was never intended as an iconoclastic exercise. It spelt out the interesting variations in the “Ramayana” story in India and Southeast Asia with a great measure of quiet reverence. In fact, Ramanujan concluded his essay with a tale of the mental and social elevation of a village dolt after he actually listened to a recitation of the “Ramayana”. Yet, because some philistines had objected to the essay being in the list of prescribed texts, the culture war was transformed into a political war.

Public anger against corrupt governance has never been as intense as it is today. However, there is also public jubilation as never before. Political VIPs going to jail is an unprecedented spectacle and it fills citizens with unprecedented joy. This is not sadism. This is recognising the sign that there is hope for our country after all. When A Raja went to jail, the general feeling was that the arrogance of his party had invited the punishment. From T R Baalu’s days DMK ministers in Delhi had behaved as though they were viceroys of the Almighty. People have their own ways of reaching conclusions. The general feeling in this case was that, be it A Raja or Dayanidhi Maran or Azhagiri, they were all using their power for their own and their group’s interests.

Evidently, the Indian consumer is unfazed by the gloomy pictures painted by commentators. Policy paralysis and governance gap are trendy phrases to use, but not much more than just that. Consider that listed Indian companies grew their top-line by an impressive 28% in the quarter ended September 2011 after a 27% growth in the previous quarter. This is a stellar performance by any standard. Companies have not seen this kind of growth since before the 2008 global crisis.

So Rajat K. Gupta, the ex boss of McKinsey & Co. and a former Goldman Sachs board member, was arrested today, and charged with being a friend of hedge fund bigshot Raj Rajaratnam. Well, that's not how the indictment read exactly. Officially, the allegations are conspiracy to commit securities fraud, plus five counts of securities fraud. Gupta faces up to 20 years in prison on each fraud charge.

Over the past year, the term “Indo-Pacific” has gained currency in strategic discourse in India. From a geopolitical perspective it represents the inclusion of the Western Pacific within the range of India’s security interests, thus stretching beyond the traditional focus on the Indian Ocean theatre. It is a logical corollary to India’s Look East policy having graduated to an Engage East policy. The fastest growing component of India’s external economic relations is its engagement with ASEAN, China and Japan and, more lately, Australia. This has resulted in a growing density of maritime traffic through the Indian Ocean and radiating all along the Western Pacific littoral.

The American decision to withdraw from Iraq brings to an end a sorry episode of recent world history, where a country was rent apart by a superpower on the basis of delusion, and perhaps deceit. The Americans do not go as victors, and neither can the hapless Iraqis see themselves as such, even though the forcibly altered paradigm has led to the Shia majority coming into their own in what is now a trifurcated polity.

The Long awaited news has finally come. Pakistan’s granting the ‘ Most Favoured Nation ( MFN)’ status to India is truly a momentous news which should be welcomed by all those who desire stability, peace and prosperity in South Asia. The process which started with the bilateral talks between the two commerce secretaries earlier this year, followed by the visit of Pakistan’s commerce minister to India in September, has yielded more than the desired results.

It has taken Imran Khan over fifteen years to capture the imagination of the young, the alienated and the disgruntled people of Pakistan. This was demonstrated in the unprecedentedly mammoth public rally by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) at the Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore last Sunday. Considering that Imran's simplistic, even naïve, political prescriptions for Pakistan's myriad complex problems haven't realistically matured in all these years, it is worth inquiring into his sudden climb into the firmament of national politics, analyse his prospects for the future and comment on its implications for state and society.

Till now, the US navy has ensured secure oil movement from and beyond the Gulf. India has been a free rider, getting oil security at no cost. China's presence in the region has till now been minimal. But a US withdrawal, even if partial, will usher in Chinese dominance. India will view that with trepidation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s trips abroad have of late been action-packed. The action, however, is not on his official aircraft; not at the various glamorous destinations; but back in New Delhi. When he went to the UN at the end of September, a controversy erupted over a bureaucratic note on the 2G scam that made P Chidambaram look complicit. It exposed a rift between Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, and once the PM returned the two were chided and made to jointly clarify matters to the media.