The signing of a mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan, all Sunni Islamic countries, is a small signal that there is something to Samual Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations thesis. The defence pact, while not clear on when one country will go to war if another is attacked, is probably driven by a sense of common threat from Shia Iran and the Jewish state of Israel – both…
By letting Dharmendra Pradhan go, albeit reluctantly, the Modi government may have bought itself some time to recoup political capital and rework its political calculations. But the time it has bought may be weeks, not months. For, once triggered, the chances are every major citizen’s dissatisfaction will now be aired in public. Some could also lead to Jantar Mantar. Already there is an E20 Janta…
Eggs are back again on the national menu of heated public debates, this time because the new BJP government in West Bengal plans to give the job of providing mid-day meals to Akshaya Patra, an Iskcon affiliate, which does not serve eggs. This wasn’t the case when Mamata Banerjee was Chief Minister. The new BJP government wants to hand over the job to the Iskcon affiliate, which adopts dietary…
The film Satluj has drawn a lot of heated arguments from multiple sides of the political divide. The film features Diljit Dosanjh playing the lead role as Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist and Khalistani supporter who was killed by the Punjab police in 1995. Khalra discovered that many missing people were secretly cremated during the peak of the Khalistani violence in Punjab in the…
The glee with which some opposition politicians and “secular” commentators have received news about “ chanda chori ” at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir is nauseating. The theft has also prompted many other people to suggest a direct government role in running temples. While genetically Hinduphobic people are rubbing their hands in anticipation of potential fallout on the BJP, those who think that such…
Priyank Kharge, Karnataka’s Home and IT Minister, believes that he has the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on the ropes with his letter dated 13 June addressed to Mohan Bhagwat. In his letter, Kharge asked for the registration details of what is widely touted as the world’s largest NGO. In a politely-drafted letter to the RSS chief, a letter that had undertones of political menace, he requested…
It is just over a month since the last round of state assembly elections ended, but we are already back in election mode. The two-and-a-half years left before the next round of general elections are announced will be intensely political and confrontational. There may be no respite. In 2027, we have the big contest in Uttar Pradesh, not to speak of Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, followed…
By most non-political assessments, the 21 June National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), which is the entry point for a course in medicine, went off more or less without incident. Sure, some candidates were denied entry as they arrived late, one candidate was shown to have registered from Abu Dhabi when he wanted to write the exam in India, some others complained (after taking the exam) how…
One has said this before, and one must say it again: there is no rogue state more roguish than the United States of America. No global laws or rules apply to it, but all laws and rules it seeks to impose on the rest of the world will apply to everybody, unless the other party happens to have the power to say no. At this point, only China and Russia seem to have this ability. India’s first focus…
If you are an investor in shares or equity mutual funds, there are basically two approaches. One is the safety-first rule, where you spread your risks over a diversified list of shares or funds. In short, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But if you have a higher risk appetite, there is Andrew Carnegie’s maxim: put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket. The simple takeout is…
Indians demonstrate the correctness of Murphy’s law repeatedly: if something can go wrong, it will. If it, miraculously doesn’t, we will find new ways to screw things up. While this is an unflattering view of the average Indian’s (and officialdom’s) chalta-hai attitude, let us step back and ask a different question: what is the single thread (apart from our own follies) that may (or may not)…
The Narendra Modi government, after 12 years in power, needs a significant (and non-cosmetic) makeover. While it has recovered after the 2024 setback by registering huge wins in West Bengal and Assam, following on the heels of Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar earlier, these political successes are not an end in themselves. Despite a good macroeconomic record so far, there is no guarantee that…
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that she is willing to listen to investors on what they have to say about reducing taxes on long-term and short-term capital gains (LTCG and STCG). No harm in listening to anyone, but she would do well to listen to others as well, and not just equity investors who are any way mollycoddled in all tax jurisdictions. There are two things we need to…
In all the euphoria over the BJP’s massive win in West Bengal, the Modi government should not forget that good ties with Bangladesh are important. It’s not that New Delhi has been asleep at the wheel. Well before the West Bengal results were out, it had chosen Dinesh Trivedi – a politician – as its new envoy to Dhaka, signalling that ties with that country will be parsed through the political…
There is an Indian story revolving around a king who asked his advisors to invent something where his feet would never get dirty when walking around. His advisors got into a frenzy, for a regal wish is like an order with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. One of the solutions was to cover the whole kingdom with leather so that no dirt would stick to His Majesty’s feet. But it was…
The world’s idea of what constitutes a “world war” has been shaped by two massive wars in the first half of the 20th century. In these two “world wars”, multiple countries were at war with multiple other countries simultaneously. These direct combatants often used resources from non-belligerents (as Great Britain did using Indian soldiers and resources in the two world wars) and both wars ended…
At a time when the country faces huge economic disruptions due to the Gulf war and also artificial intelligence-related technology, the Modi government should evaluate and reorient the scheme where companies have to contribute two percent of their net profits for corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects. The issue is one of relative utility of CSR spends: are they better spent being invested…
It is interesting that Chinese supremo Xi Jinping should invoke the “Thucydides Trap” during Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, indirectly suggesting that the US should not fret too much about China’s rise and instead seek to partner with it. The Thucydides Trap, which is attributed to fifth century BCE Greek historian Thucydides, who sought to understand the underlying causes behind the…
The rise of the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), a political party set up by actor Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu, implies the slow uprooting of Dravidianism in the state. With a 35 percent vote share, TVK is still lower than the combined share of the DMK and AIADMK, with 45 percent, but a far cry from the above 70+ percent combined share that the latter held in 2021. The Dravidian identity,…
If India is to meet its main economic, social and geopolitical challenges, Muslim politics has to change. The post-1947 approach of the “secular” parties - which has been about making symbolic concessions to appease Muslims and then dividing the Hindu vote using various means - is now past its sell-by date. Both Muslims and Hindus have seen past this strategy. Muslims are no longer buying the…
India regularly gets listed as a country a country of “particular concern” by the US Council for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). This institution is highly irrelevant and also has no business commenting on other countries’ religious freedoms, especially when it can’t do so in its own home country, the USA. We must ignore all USCIRF reports as motivated, but we must discuss the core…
India’s governments have always fretted about the average citizen’s love for gold, a love that has to be paid for in dollars. They have done everything and more to douse this costly passion, but they have always failed. In the past, customs duties on gold were raised to extortionate levels to prevent such imports, but they only drove the imports underground. A Kotak Securities report estimates…
The high voting percentage (92.6 percent) in the first phase of the West Bengal elections could be the result of two factors: first, the clean-up of the electoral rolls with the removal of dead, duplicate and migrated voters, with several lakh voters still to be reinstated after hearings at the appellate tribunals; and second, the extraordinary nature of the challenge being mounted by the BJP this…
The issue of Love Jihad is controversial for three reasons: one, it seems like a pejorative label; two, it erases the line separating genuine inter-faith marriages from those where one of the purposes of marriage is to achieve conversion of the spouse to one’s own religion; three, it reeks of a patriarchal view of love and marriage. Let us thus deal with all three objections. Instead of Love Jihad…
It is interesting that even as a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant is examining the scope of two fundamental rights under articles 25 and 26, we are witnessing repeated Hindu anger against conversions and the targeting of Hindu religious symbols (two cases in point are Tata Consultancy Services and Lenskart ), all of which article 25 directly or indirectly…