The real cost of the spectrum scam -
R Srinivasan, Business Line
Decision makers appear to think terrestrial wireless is the only way to go. We are in real danger of missing the bus on alternative technologies for connectivity. India managed to leapfrog several generations in technology and connectivity thanks to the mobile telephony revolution. But unfortunately, technology has a habit of not allowing one to rest on one's laurels and soak in the glory. Thanks to the heat and dust of the spectrum scam, there is a real danger of the momentum...
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Two great powers, no real leadership -
Josef Joffe, Hoover
When U.S. President Barack Obama pays his respects to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin this week, he will encounter a Germany that no sitting American president has encountered in many decades. No, not the "Fourth Reich" of punditry's fevered imagination. For the first time since Harry Truman arrived in Potsdam in 1945 to dismember the Third Reich, Germany is Europe's No. 1 again. The irony couldn't be thicker. Twice in the 20th century, Germany tried to grab hegemony by bayonet...
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A pool of lies -
Debarshi Dasgupta, Outlook India
“Baang,” she replies when asked if she drinks water from the handpump she’s standing next to. That’s ‘no’ in Lukhi Murmu’s native Santhali language. There is filthy water around the pump. A pig grunts nearby, stubborn enough to return when chased away, to forage on the rice left over from the washed utensils. “Water from all the handpumps in our village smells a lot,” she says. It’s the high iron content. We can’t help but go to the pond twice daily to collect drinking water.
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Wooing Bihar & Orissa, irking all the rest -
Sunil Jain, Indian Express
With Nitish Kumar ending a 17-year-old alliance with the BJP, and the UPA assiduously wooing him for months with all manner of goodies, the last being a Rs 12,000 crore grant from the Backward Region Grant Fund (BRGF), election season is formally upon us. Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has also formally declared his willingness to be wooed by talking of how the state is discriminated against in terms of money from the Centre. And to make public its intent to woo, the government has set up a panel...
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Manmohan Singh's old age home -
Iftikhar Gilani, DNA
Forget old wine, it is ancient wine in an equally ancient bottle. Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday opted for experience over youth in what was possibly his last cabinet reshuffle before the 2014 elections. The swearing-in ceremony of four cabinet ministers and four ministers of state at the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhawan turned out to be a geriatric affair, with 86-year-old Sis Ram Ola finding it difficult to even take his oath. The Congress had played its cards well. The Jat leader was evidently inducted to reach out to voters...
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Chidu’s ‘Ferrari’ of reforms has an autorickshaw engine -
R Jagannathan, FirstPost
The completely pointless Union cabinet reshuffle yesterday (17 June) tells us three things: one, the Congress party has given up on its government; two, from now on politics will dictate policy and not economics (assuming the reverse was ever true of UPA); and, three, the role of P Chidambaram is not so much to push reforms as to keep up the illusion of forward movement alive so that the economy does not capsize in the run-up to the elections.
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B Raman, India’s seasoned spymaster and trenchant US critic, dies at 77 -
Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India
His last tweet on May 30, as he battled the final stages of terminal cancer, read, ''Hanumanji willing, shd be back home coming Saturday.'' But as his life ebbed away over the last fortnight, Bahukutumbi Raman might have noted, in his usual dry and dispassionate manner, that (1) Hanumanji was not around (2) Hanumanji must have had other pressing matters and (3) One should prepare for scenarios without Hanumanji.
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Muslims that 'minority politics' left behind -
Khalid Anis Ansari, Hindu
‘Pasmanda’, a Persian term meaning “those who have fallen behind,” refers to Muslims belonging to the shudra (backward) and ati-shudra (Dalit) castes. It was adopted as an oppositional identity to that of the dominant ashraf Muslims (forward castes) in 1998 by the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, a group which mainly worked in Bihar. Since then, however, the pasmanda discourse has found resonance elsewhere too. The dominant perception is that Islam is an egalitarian religion and that Indian Muslims on the whole...
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Can Modi win in 2014? -
Chetan Bhagat, Times of India
There's little dispute about BJP entering the 2014 election race with Narendra Modi as the general. The more important question is, can he win? Or perhaps the more important one for the BJP, what will it take to win? This column is not written with the intent to back the BJP. It is merely a set of actions and events that need to happen if they want to see Modi as PM. As Indian citizens our best outcome is if there's a tough contest, with each side putting in their best.
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Modi versus his party -
Shekhar Gupta, Indian Express
The noise over Narendra Modi's elevation has drowned out some important questions. What does the BJP stand for now? How does its ideology, policy and politics compare with the Vajpayee-Advani years? How much distance has it travelled since then, and in which direction: left, right, forward or backwards? Or maybe, instead of the judgemental backward or forward, let's just call them the shifts since 2004, when the BJP lost power and, equally importantly, Vajpayee lost his voice politically and also, sadly, physically.
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Legal net can secure Katchatheevu claim -
Manuraj Shunmugasundaram, Hindu
In his article in The Hindu, “Chasing a boat we missed long ago” (Op-Ed, May 27, 2013), Deepak Raju has criticised the futility of the pending litigation on Katchatheevu island and has described claims to retrieve the island as weak in international law. There is no doubt an order issued by the Supreme Court of India is not binding on Sri Lanka, as Mr. Raju has said, but it must not be forgotten that the court’s jurisdiction extends up to the contiguous zone (up to 24 nautical miles) of India.
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