A break to avert a breakdown was very much in the offing. The longing to remain completely cut off and languish in blissful ignorance was overpowering. So what if it is unbecoming of a scribe sworn to seemingly scholarly searches and a set writing routine.
Author: T R Jawahar
At the end of the day, there is a Rs 65,000 crore business empire. At the beginning there was nothing. Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani literally built a corporate monolith out of thin air, by his sheer wizardry and indomitable will power, a combination that was on stark display right through his tumultuous life, even during the last ten days when he was fighting his terminal battle.
The NDA can be expanded to mean many things to many. In this self-styled National Democratic Alliance, ‘Democratic’ often means absolute anarchy in the ranks. To its external enemies addicted to minority vote banks, the ‘D’ is interpreted as ‘Demonic’. But to most observers, NDA is fast turning into a Naturally Defeatist Alliance!
The sudden spurt in the number of Presidential prospects has kindled my gambling/gaming instincts. So no matter who the contestants in that shabby arena are, why not we, who foot the burgeoning bills of that plum post, roll the dice ourselves? Let me do it on all your behalf.
The rich are unhappy with MSingh because they are unable to enrich themselves further thanks to the policy paralysis. The poor, who are beyond the economist-PM’s statistical growth horizon are simmering like never before, what with poverty stalking them all through but the overhanging mirage of prosperity tantalisingly teasing them even while being out of reach of their outstretched hands. But it is the middle class anger over corruption, inflation, recession, civic disarray etc that is the primary cause of MSingh’s troubles in recent times.
The theme song is all too familiar: ‘It’s the oil companies that have raised the petrol prices, not the Government which had decontrolled it long back’. The modus operandi too is a much-tested official tactic: A shocker timed after Parli session so that the already hot cauldron does not explode.
When A Raja was granted bail one almost felt justice has been done. So how do we account for the sudden spurt of seeming sympathy? After all, is not the former Tele minister’s culpability firmly established? Well, it is not that we love Raja more. Only that while this decoy-Caesar took all the stabs for playing a bit part in the 2G drama the real Caesars lurking behind the curtains got away without a scratch!
She started her Presidentship by bringing to the high Constitutional position a scandalous legacy. Her earlier political avatars in similar, though lesser, posts were characterised by a parasitic tendency to prey on public funds. She had lived true to that trend all through her five-year tenure and is ending it in her signature scandalous style.
If secularism in India is in the ICU of Hypocrisy Hospital, it is at least in elite, albeit equally sick, company. The next bed is occupied by spirituality. Though at present sight both appear to have nil hope of survival or salvation, secularism can hope to be clinically alive on constitutional ventilators. But spirituality is in critical health with the life support systems being painfully withdrawn by the very people drafted to sustain it.