The VIP syndrome

It was just as I thought it would be. Amidst all the rage over frisking of our former president, A P J Abdul Kalam himself never registered a protest. From whatever I have known of him through papers, one minor brush with him at the Ahmedabad airport following his visit to Gujarat after the 2002

Truth behind Ranbir Singh Encounter must be Revealed

THE CONTROVERSIAL encounter of Ranbir Singh took place on July 3 and police says that he was riding a motorcycle with his two friends when the police stopped him at a check post. The three men got into an altercation with a sub-inspector, who had asked them to stop and then fled into a nearby

Let not ‘BJP ka Gandhi’ get away easily

In the backlanes of Uttar Pradesh, Varun Feroze Gandhi is referred to as the “BJP ka Gandhi”. It’s a reference indicative of what’s been perhaps the 29-year-old poet-politician’s central dilemma in life so far: the struggle to carve an independent identity for himself outside of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy. His cousin, Rahul, has been bequeathed the

In the name of Allah

Delhi has been targeted again by teror outfits. Indian Mujahideen claimed the responsibility of Delhi bomb blasts and in an email they said, “In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahideen strikes again! Do whatever you can, within five minutes from now, feel the terror of death.” In one their previous email it emphasised on

Exclusive: SIMI chief’s shocking revelations

From a moderate start to a dreaded terror outfit, the Students Islamic Movement of India has come a long way. Though the theories attached to the shift in stance by SIMI are relatively old, Safdar Nagori, the most prominent face of the banned outfit, said in his confession statement before the Madhya Pradesh police that

The Second Murder

Sometimes, a single event can tell us more about the times we live in than an entire library full of sociological treatises. The Aarushi murder case is one such event. The responses to the case reveal the flaws in the institutions that we depend on: the police, the government, the media and the great Indian

Point to Ponder Over Raj Thackeray

I agree that this post on the speeches by the MNS chief Raj Thackeray has come quite late but I intended it to be delayed as my first response is quite impulsive and need not be of any wisdom. Now I do not claim that the post contains unquestioned knowledge, deep thinking or wisdom but

Why Dr Binayak Sen must be released

Dr Binayak Sen seems to have caught the imagination of the mainstream media in India at last. But one has to remember that he has spent a year in a Chhattisgarh jail. An international award by the Global Heath Council named after Jonathan Mann to Dr Sen for his untiring work in the field of

Terrorism doesn’t shock us anymore!

If terrorism is ultimately tamed, it will be because India is India. The Jaipur blasts of Tuesday, despite the horrendous toll they have taken in terms of human lives, will have little or no impact on anything — policies, people’s lives, or the much-hoped-for communal polarisation. Terror no longer has the capacity to shock. It

Unique Protest in Supreme Court by YFE

A report of what happened when students gathered at the SC lawns to appeal against the way 27% reservation for OBCs is being implemented. Wondering why the youth brigade didn’t come up with strong reactions immediately after the Supreme Court ruling that gave way to 27 per cent reservation to the OBCs? Well, this could