The resounding victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Gujarat Assembly election has once again reinforced the argument that with good governance and a strong development-oriented agenda, it is possible to buck the anti-incumbency t
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
In India, it has become customary to abuse the Constitution and/or Constitutional Authority whenever a political party or a political leader is in trouble for its or his misdeeds. Let us not forget that this began with Jawaharlal Nehru himself and
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
A National Convention held recently in New Delhi on ‘Politics of Terror’ has brought to focus the need to re-look into provisions of special laws that are currently in use to counter terrorism. When confronted with armed militancy, democracies fa
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
Archaic rules and deep divisions along political lines within the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the controversial 2G Spectrum sale has affected the efficacy and sanctity of parliamentary investigations. While the controversy over the co