Some things to Reconsider

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...

  https://theprint.in/national-interest/indian-pakistan-air-force-doctrines-1965-1971-kargil-op-sindoor/2722096/ Among the well-worn tales of the 1965 Indo-Pak war, one stands tall: Lal Bahadur Shastry’s fearless call to cross the International Border in Punjab, defying both diplomatic and military counsel (especially diplomatic), to relieve pressure in Kashmir or then LoAC. It was a rare moment in history when Delhi’s political leadership took a risk for the soldier in the trench. But during the recent monsoon session of Parliament, Narendra Modi, in what can only be described as his “Blames, Boasts & Bullshit — Volume Whatever,” introduced a new villain into his perpetual “blame-the-past” series. Nehru the usual punching bag, Manmohan Singh gets a usual swipe, Rajiv Gandhi a mention sometimes, and even Indira in a rare moment. But Shastry? Yes, Shastry. Accused, by insinuation, of “squandering” the chance to reclaim Haji Pir Pass and Kartarpur Sahib. Why? Because Op Sind...

https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/bhagwat-sets-off-jitters-at-75-bjp-shift-towards-empowering-youth-125071101485_1.html     I write in response to your article published on July 12th titled “Bhagwat Sets Off Jitters at 75” , which — in the grand tradition of a now increasingly pliant Indian press — offers a garland of praise to the BJP for its so-called “robust and meritocratic HR system.” A bolder claim hasn't been made since North Korea declared its leader invented the hamburger. The author’s argument rests on three wobbly legs — “retention,” “ideological glue,” and “absence of dynastic politics.” It is, essentially, an attempt to evaluate the BJP using the yardstick of the Congress’ failings, rather than the BJP’s own performance. That may pass for analysis on television panels, but not in serious discourse. Let’s apply a real organisational development (OD) lens to the party — one that includes Recruitment, Retention, Promotion, Diversity, Evaluat...

https://theprint.in/national-interest/zohran-mamdani-new-york-mayor-indian-socialism/2673153/  https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/zohran-mamdani-socialist-agenda-could-actually-spur-faster-growth-in-nyc-125062701427_1.html Shekhar Gupta’s recent column on Zohran Mamdani reads like a man trying to play neutral referee in a rigged match—raising one eyebrow at the Sanghi mob baying for blood, while slyly tossing them a whistle and pretending not to notice. With the other, it slips the ideological brass knuckles to the crowd already frothing at the mouth. Mamdani, Gupta suggests, is a well-meaning radical caught in a swirl of impractical dreams. But scratch past the polish of editorial polite prose and one finds the familiar discomfort of India’s populists and the extended coterie It’s not that Mamdani’s ideas are too radical—it’s that they are delivered from a platform that can’t be easily dismissed. A brown man, Muslim by heritage, representing a diverse district in ...

https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/asim-munir-tightens-grip-but-fifth-star-won-t-alter-ground-realities-125053001946_1.html  By all means, Shekhar Gupta’s column “The Weight of the Fifth Star” could have been a sober, strategic analysis of civil-military tensions in Pakistan. Instead, it reads like a warning flare fired in the dark—noisy, dramatic, but ultimately directionless. While the piece accurately captures Pakistan’s descent into hybrid authoritarianism, it ultimately leans too far into speculative geopolitics, bordering on the theatrical. Let us begin with what is beyond dispute. Pakistan remains a garrison state, where the military tail wags the civilian dog. The Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, is not a national leader but a ceremonial compère reading scripts drafted in Rawalpindi. The President, Asif Ali Zardari, continues to weave his intrigues—but these days mostly in the salons of Karachi rather than the corridors of power. The institutions that should...