Communication error
In the classic BBC political satire serial, ‘Yes Minister’, the minister Jim Hacker asks his senior bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby how to deal with a group of protesters. “Don’t...
Modi versus the rest
Travelling into Gujarat during election time is like entering the kingdom of an absolute monarch. Never before has a state election been so completely dominated by the personality of...
A polarising figure
‘Don’t insult me by calling me a politician. I am a political cartoonist!’ warned the Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, lighting up a pipe, glass of white wine in...
Advantage Modi
Predicting elections can be injurious to the health of journalists and pollsters, more so when there is still a month to go before voting. Even so, there is a...
Stuck in a time warp
Nitin Gadkari isn’t quite known to mind his language. A few weeks after he took over as BJP president, he expressed himself with typical candour to a group of...
From rumble to a roar
At a seminar in Delhi a few years ago, a soft-spoken, petite woman in a crumpled sari was one of the panelists. She engaged in the debate and then...
Happy birthday Amitabh Bachchan: 70 years young
The Shehenshah of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan, turns 70 on Thursday, October 11. In a special interview with IBN18 Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai on the occasion, Amitabh Bachchan talks about his...
The topi has to fit
In the early 1990s, when TN Seshan as Chief Election Commissioner was the flavour of the season, a packed Rotary club meeting in Mumbai asked him to stand for...
Playing to the gallery
Dear Mamata-di, Let me at the very outset express a sneaking admiration for the manner in which you have proved your critics wrong yet again: you don’t just bark,...
An ugly parochialism
Dear Raj, This is the second open letter I am writing to you since, as was the case four years ago, you refused to do interviews in any language...