When salmon swim against all odds to reach their spawning grounds no obstruction can stop them. The huge number of rape cases now being reported in India reminds me of this annual migration of salmon. Was India free of rape till fairly recently and
I may be permitted to start this paper with a personal statement because some controversial issues would be raised in the paper and I want it to be understood in advance that personally I am deeply committed to secularism. I sincerely believe that th
In Delhi along the Yamuna River a stretch of 371 hectares, that is, approximately 927 acres, has come under cremation ground, samadhi, etc., of people perceived as the leaders of the nation. These include Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur
In order to understand the topic of this paper perhaps it would be best to have clearly before us the definition of the issues we are addressing. For this purpose resort was had to the new Oxford Dictionary of English. There are four words whose
I was a stripling short of twenty-three years when I joined as Assistant Collector at Morena after completing my training at the IAS Training School at Metcalfe House. Morena can be frightfully hot in the summer and my training required almost consta
The Constitution of India, despite the amendments which have been introduced from time to time, has a high degree of immutability, partly because its basic structure is sound, partly because it establishes a balance between public good and the const
One of the defining moments in my life was when I was on deputation to Princeton University for a mid-career course. It was the height of the Vietnamese War and the United States was in ferment because many people, especially students, opposed the wa
China is not a democracy and there is the one party rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC). From time to time the Party holds party meetings at which matters of policy are discussed in detail. The 16th CPC Central Committee meeting was held in B
The newspaper headlines and electronic media such as NDTV24×7, Times Now, CNN-IBN keeps screaming at us that India is the land of scams, the very fountainhead of corruption. On the one hand are the Indian people – harried, betrayed, looted by thos
When India became independent the one and only national level political party was the Congress, whose identity as the party in the vanguard of the freedom movement gave it a very special place in the hearts and minds of Indians. Mahatma Gandhi was