Some things to Reconsider

Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General, while appearing before a Congressional hearing on the Jeffrey Epstein case, invoked the Dow Jones, the S&P, and the Nasdaq, claiming they were touching new highs. She admonished the hearing committee that rising stock indices should be the prime focus of Congress instead of discussing the dead financier’s immoral life and its consequences. In Pakistan, television journalist Nusrat Javed reported another small but telling story with admirable calm. Electricity consumers were to pay a new levy—between Rs 200 and Rs 650 per household—so that industry could be subsidised in the name of competitiveness. Ordinary citizens would underwrite industrial growth. The burden would travel downward; the benefits upward. This, too, was justified as economic necessity. Back home, we are told almost daily that India is on its way to becoming the world’s third-largest economy. The declaration is repeated with such fervour that it has begun to sound l...

 Modi brand rests on two pillars. First, every public figure of consequence is expected to praise him with near-religious devotion, as though he were a deity rather than a political leader. Second, there is never any acknowledgment of failure. If something goes wrong, it is explained away as natural, inevitable, or simply beyond anyone’s control. To justify this supposed inevitability, billionaires and power-brokers step forward to present “facts” that are often as distant from reality as the Earth is from the Moon. The delightful spectacle of Niranjan Hiranandani, the venerable real estate magnate—and chief competitor to the Adani empire, no less—showering the Prime Minister with the kind of beatific praise. This, coming not long after the entire nation watched a political drama unfold, where an opposition MP, Mahua Moitra, faced the judicial axe over allegations of taking favours from this very same gentleman. The man survives the scandal, thrives, and then publicly kisses the ...

During his recent visit to Gaza, Jared Kushner — Donald Trump’s ever-serene son-in-law and self-appointed statesman — was asked on television what he had seen there. His reply: “It looks like a nuclear bomb was dropped.” When pressed further — “Was this genocide?” — Kushner, a man more comfortable dealing in property than in pity, said “No.” Buildings turned to ash, hospitals to craters, hunger to strategy. But unlike Afghanistan in 1979, the “Muslim world” did not erupt. No calls for jihad, no volunteers crossing borders, no princes emptying treasuries. Where, one might ask, are the new Mujahedeen? To find them, we must go back to that bitter winter of 1979, when the Soviet Union marched into Afghanistan. The Soviets said they came reluctantly, to rescue a collapsing ally. But once Soviet boots touched Afghan soil, a guerrilla army sprouted almost overnight — the Mujahedeen , “fighters of Islam.” They were not Afghans alone. They came from the deserts of Arabia, the plains of Egy...

Come October, India enters what I call the “Republic of Outrage.” The so-called festival season now comes with its own ritual choreography — not of lights, but of hashtags. First, the annual denunciation of Gandhi: a flurry of posts calling him the “great appeaser,” followed by that curious sect of Godse devotees who believe the man with the pistol was history’s most misunderstood patriot. And then, inevitably, comes the annual symphony on fireworks — the claim that bursting crackers is a time-honoured Hindu tradition. Celebrities, industrialists, and TV anchors join in with missionary zeal. Some sing solo, others harmonise, but they all hum the same tune. From television studios to X (that glorious temple of half-truths), the chorus swells. Sudhir Chaudhary, our national priest of prime-time patriotism, warns solemnly that “banning crackers is an attack on faith.” Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai logs on to declare that “pollution isn’t caused by crackers,” and that restrictions are...

Couple of years ago, was have a discussion with Andhbhakt, who firmly believed that Prime Minister Modi was correcting the ills of the past, my position was vehemently opposite. During the argument, my question to this friend was, “what’s the difference between planning commission and NITI aayog.” This was rhetorical question because none of us had a clue, but the response was interesting. “This kind of hair splitting is for JNU kind of debates, not for working mortals like us.” In other words which is the standard belief among the community “Modi ji ne kiya hoga to soch samajh ke he keya hoga.” But I came to see, thanks largely to Eram Agha’s Caravan article and other public sources, that the differences are deep, structural, and troubling. The Planning Commission was born in 1950, just after the Constitution came into effect. It was the product of a consensus among leaders across party lines. President Rajendra Prasad spoke of raising living standards through structured planning...

For years, Indian economists droned the same refrain — too much revenue expenditure, not enough capital expenditure. The government, they said, must stop spending on salaries and start building roads. It’s the fiscal equivalent of being told to eat more protein and less dessert. Under Narendra Modi, the state has gone on a construction binge worthy of the Mughal emperors — ₹54 trillion poured into capital expenditure in just eleven years. In the last three alone, we’ve spent over ₹11 trillion annually. Roads, railways, defence, water projects — you name it. The bulldozers haven’t rested since. So, naturally, one would expect an economic dawn — faster movement of goods, lower logistics costs, more jobs, happier people. A Keynesian dream, in other words: the government spends, demand rises, and the private sector jumps in, inspired and eager. Only, it hasn’t. The animal spirit is not just asleep; it seems comatose. Private capital expenditure — the ultimate litmus test of investo...

 Donald Trump is back doing what he does best — throwing tantrums in prime time and calling it policy. His latest target? India. From parading deported Indian immigrants in chains — yes, actual chains, mid-flight — to snatching credit for ending Operation Sindoor, Trump’s message is simple: “I’m the boss of Vishwaguru.” He’s slapped tariffs on Indian goods, frowned upon Russian oil imports, and hiked H1B visa fees — a direct jab at the Indian tech class. And New Delhi’s response? Silence . The kind that pretends to be strength but smells suspiciously like fear. Spin doctors call it strategic restraint . The rest of us call it waiting for Trump’s next mood swing. When Trump wished Modi on his 75th birthday or extended his velvet glove , BJP’s online cheerleaders pounced on it like a Bollywood twist — “See! Friendship restored!” — until, of course, Trump’s next tweet arrived with his usual thunder. As the American columnist Ashley Tellis politely put it, India’s “extreme discipl...

R. Jagannathan in his article titled “Wooing billionaires & HNIs” published in Business Standard recently wrote that India needs “patient capital” or a booming plea for Indians and Indian Diaspora to invest in India. He asked, why do our wealthy continue to pack their Louis Vuitton luggage and say tata-bye-bye to Mother India? The answer isn’t rocket science. All it takes is a little honesty, a little introspection, and a little less finger-pointing. Take the case of Salman Khan. Eternal bachelor, permanent controversy machine. In January 2014, just before elections, there he was — flying kites with Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad. Salman smiled, called Modi a “good man,” but stopped short of endorsement. Clever man. At that time, his hit-and-run case was hanging like a noose. In 2015, BJP in power, a sessions court gave him five years in jail. By the end of that year, Bombay High Court acquitted him. Coincidence? God’s grace? Call it what you will. But Salman never converted into a...

Consider two small but telling news items that appeared last week on Prime Minister Modi’s Birthday, both slipping into what I like to call the “News Shadow Region.” That’s the part of the newspaper where editors quietly park stories that are true but awkward —“minimum disclosure, maximum gains.” First, Vantara —a massive animal rescue and rehabilitation centre in Gujarat spearheaded by Anant Ambani. Officially, it’s an act of compassion by the Reliance Foundation. Unofficially, it looks like a billionaire’s private zoo masquerading as Noah’s Ark. Tigers, cheetahs, giraffes, zebras, orangutans—even a mountain gorilla. They’ve got a better collection than most African reserves. Some of these animals were “rescued” from canned hunting farms. Wildlife enthusiasts will tell you a simple, grim fact: for every exotic animal that survives transport, two others die enroute. Conservation? More like shopping with casualties. The real miracle here isn’t the ark, though. It’s the judiciary....

History, if you care to look, is not some boring classroom lecture. It is a living, breathing reality that keeps reminding us: “Power never comes with a lifetime warranty.” But human beings—especially those who smell the intoxicating aroma of authority—refuse to believe it. Pick any date in Saddam Hussein’s bloody calendar and you’ll find a crisis hotter than the desert sun. The war against Iran bleeding Iraq dry. The financial debt mountain taller than his palaces. Israel casually bombed his nuclear toys. Kurds raising hell in the north. And later, Uncle Sam’s sanctions choking Iraq for nearly a decade. Yet Saddam’s moustache stayed upright and his statue taller than reason—until the Americans decided they’d had enough. South Africa offers another case. A system so brutally racist it shocked even its Western friends. From the sixties onwards, global opinion began to turn. Sports boycotts, diplomatic isolation. Yet apartheid, shameless and gasping, dragged on for decades until Mand...

The job of a Prime Minister is never an easy one. Some inherit a storm; others inherit calm seas with a steady wind. Jawaharlal Nehru got the raw end of the deal: a traumatised, partitioned land, millions uprooted, and the Cold War beginning to freeze the world in two hostile blocs. Lal Bahadur Shastri died a war time Prime Minister, and Indira Gandhi presided over a war-ravaged economy, staring across hostile borders at Pakistan and China while the superpowers treated India as a pawn. Morarji Desai stumbled into South Block after the Emergency, the West reeling from stagflation and his own coalition too weak to command authority. Rajiv Gandhi, with a brute majority in Parliament, was besieged by multiple insurgencies at home and a belligerent Zia-ul-Haq across the border. P.V. Narasimha Rao had to deal with the mother of all crises—the 1991 balance of payments collapse —just as the Soviet Union, India’s security blanket, disintegrated into history. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who loo...

Who would have imagined that in India, the land of Gandhi ji’s simplest ideals, we would be witnessing a growth story so split that it resembles not a straight line rising but a sharply diverging “K”? One arm rockets upward, glittering with corporate gains and luxury whispers, while the other—silent, struggling—slides downward, borne by millions of workers, farmers, women in villages, and small shopkeepers. How ironic: the nation that owes its survival to unity now splinters economically into two disparate realities. It was in this context that political strategist Prashant Kishor, in a recent interview, made a striking remark. He declared his opposition to the Prime Minister’s promise of two new Amrit Bharat trains originating from Bihar. According to him, these trains were not designed to ease the lives of ordinary Biharis but to “facilitate the outward migration of inexpensive labour.” His observation is not merely cynical commentary; it points to a deeper malaise in the way India...

  Punjab. Yes, Punjab. The land that once champion of Green Revolution, that filled Delhi’s plates, that supplied grain for war and peace alike. Today? Reduced to standing in Delhi’s darbar with a begging bowl. And the darbar—majestic, distracted, full of hubris—barely glances. Punjab, it seems, is now the unwanted child of the Republic. A state tolerated, not embraced. Consider the floods. Villages drowned, crops ruined, forty-six lives lost, more than 1.5 lakh people affected. Punjab was gasping, but the Prime Minister? He was campaigning elsewhere, cameras clicking, slogans soaring. His Punjab visit came later, reluctantly, perfunctorily, as if someone in the “royal secretariat” pencilled it into the diary. Contrast this with Indira Gandhi. Whatever her motives, when bombs fell or borders bled, she rushed to Punjab. Yes, it was theatre, yes, it was for cameras—but Punjabis felt seen. Today, the subliminal message is crystal: Punjab’s pain is optional. The Guardian —a Londo...