Columns

June 5, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Covid-19: Where a new India is born

Since a prolonged lockdown offers an opportunity for the creative juices to flow, allow me a little bit of poetic licence this week to adapt the famous poem of...

May 22, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Dark side of Gujarat Model

The much-trumpeted ‘Gujarat model’ is in a mess in corona times. Consider the following: Not only does Gujarat have amongst the highest number of corona virus cases in the...

May 8, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

The Babus Have Taken Over Corona Fight

The classic BBC television sitcom, Yes Minister, superbly captures the intriguing relationship between politician and bureaucrat. In one memorable sequence, Sir Humphrey Appleby, tells his minister James Hacker, “You...

April 24, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

No Islamophobia Please in Corona Times

“Hey, news television seems to have finally broken out of the Hindu-Muslim mindset!” I exulted to a colleague soon after the lockdown was announced last month. As news channels...

April 10, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Compassion with Coercion: Leadership in age of corona

It is perhaps a less known fact that Narendra Modi’s political career was dramatically transformed by a natural disaster. The alleged mishandling of relief operations during the 2001 Kutch...

April 10, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

The Corona Challenge is about Team India not Brand Modi

In the build up to the 2019 general elections, the BJP’s most potent campaign plank was to pose a direct question: ‘Modi versus who?’. By foregrounding the leadership issue,...

March 13, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Scindia revolt and an imploding congress

Soon after the Congress was swept aside in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Jyotiraditya Scindia reportedly spoke up at a Congress Working Committee meeting, expressing the need for introspection...

February 28, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

A Riot Waiting To Happen

This is the age of the rabble-rouser with social media amplifying the noise of the loudest voices. In Delhi, a marginal politician like Kapil Mishra has mastered the art...

February 13, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Kejriwal for Delhi, but not for India yet

The emergence of Arvind Kejriwal has undoubtedly been the start-up story in Indian politics of the last decade just as the inexorable rise of Narendra Modi has been the...

January 17, 2020
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

MS University to JNU: Gujarat model goes national

Long before Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), there was Maharaja Sayajirao (MS) University, Vadodara. Named after one of the most enlightened rulers of princely India, the university was seen as...