Biltin Toker, my friend Biltin Toker was my friend at Oxford, he was from Istanbul, Turkey. He studied architecture at Oxford and we became close friends. He used to win prizes for his innovative architecture designs and he and his designs used to be flashed at the Oxford towns local paper, Oxford Mail. After we…
Third Front in Indian politics
How it would transform Indian politics? A new Indian political flavour, this new coalition of regional and smaller parties? Yes, it looks like that. So long it was the two big national parties that headed the coalition politics in India. Now, it is the regional parties, the smaller parties that are converging towards a new…
Why some write autobiographies?
What price earthly glory ! No man is immortal! An autobiographical odyssey? Not quite!Here are certain random thoughts on why some choose to write autobiographies,while more prominent leaders don’t do the same? An intriguing question?Yes,if you look beyond the superficial writings most autobiographies and biographies are.Some autobiographies are just ego trips.Some others,the ones often by…
World’s great newspapers : How Indian newspapers compare?
Book Review Media Monolith by Mark Tungate,2004,pp 260 Worldwide,newspapers seem to be growing in strength.Says the World Association of Newspapers(WAN) that in spite of the TV,the Internet and other digital distribution channels, it is the print media,the newspapers that has reported sales growth of 2.3 per cent last year.And more interestingly,it is India and China…
Will the UPA government last its full term?
Political morals and political legitimacy The current contradictions and confusions raise many questions! Democracy in India is now reduced to numbers games.All norms and high principles are thrown away.So,the coalition politics has been taking so many opportunistic survival strategies. Do political morals and political legitimacy matter in a democracy?Is Indian democracy at this point of…
We need a bold new vision!
Agriculture is an economic and political power! There is now a new sense of urgency to do something in the agricultural sector. That is a welcome development. But do the public also know why this sense of urgency? The most obvious explanation is the current mood of despondency of the ruling UPA, more so the…
Who says rural India is poor?
Only 6 MPs attend Lok Sabha debate on poverty! MPs absent themselves often! Only six members were present, to start with, in the Lok Sabha, which was to discuss the issue of eradication of hunger in the country. The attendance was less than one per cent. The current strength of the House is 540. Jairam…
Paul Johnson, the little Englander?
Book Review: Paul Johnson Creators -from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Victor Hugo to Picasso and Disney Harper Collins,2006,pp300 The English people of today seem to be caught in an identity crisis of their own.Lost their empire and with that has gone their assumed plumes of hauteur and bluster.The English,more than the ordinary Brits,the so-called establishment…