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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India's feeble foreign policy -
Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Foreign Affairs
For the last decade, few trends have captured the world’s attention as much as the so-called rise of the rest, the spectacular economic and political emergence of powers such as China and India. Particularly in the United States, India watchers point to the country’s large and rapidly expanding economy, its huge population, and its nuclear weapons as signs of its imminent greatness. Other observers fret about the pace of India’s rise, asking whether New Delhi is living up to its potential...
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NSA surveillance challenged in court as criticism grows over US data program -
Spencer Ackerman and Paul Lewis, Guardian
The first constitutional challenge to the widespread surveillance of US citizens disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden was laid down on Tuesday, as international pressure on the Obama administration over the scale of the dragnet intensified. In a lawsuit filed in New York, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the US government of a process that was "akin to snatching every American's address book".
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The Aurangzeb factor: 5 lessons from Modi-Advani tussle -
R Jagannathan, FirstPost
Lal Krishna Advani’s decision to withdraw his resignation from three party posts yesterday may have ended the crisis in the BJP over the elevation of Narendra Modi as campaign committee chief, but rest assured, the core issue hasn’t gone away. The core issue is this: how should parties prepare for an orderly transition in leadership? Should they do it the modern equivalent of the Aurangzeb way, by a show of force or internal intrigue, or should they have a proper process?
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