Columns

March 17, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Can opposition take on Modi in 2019?

In the aftermath of the 2014 general election debacle, I asked a senior Congressman how his party would now battle the Narendra Modi juggernaut. “Not to worry, we have...

March 12, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Modi 24 X 7, 365 days

In the final leg of the 2014 general elections, Narendra Modi dramatically announced in a rally, “Yeh dil maange more”. It was a quintessential Modi soundbite: the BJP’s internal...

March 2, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Lotus could bloom in UP

Predicting the outcome of an Uttar Pradesh election can be injurious to health. In 1993, extensively covering a UP election for the first time, when my editor asked me...

February 17, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

The UP Muslim ‘vote bank’ predicament

The complicated and controversial notion of a Muslim vote bank stretches back to the first general elections in 1952. The post-Partition face of the Indian Muslims, Maulana Azad, was...

February 3, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Congress will remain a C team player

Five years is an eternity in Indian politics. As Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav beamed beatifically into the cameras last weekend, the mind was thrown back to 2012 when...

January 20, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

It’s now ‘Modi vs All’

The BJP and the Shiv Sena were once seen as ‘natural allies’ but life for the original saffron alliance is not quite the same in the age of Narendra...

January 6, 2017
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Will politics shrink in 2017?

We live, to put it mildly, in “interesting times”. This is an age where TV family serials have given way to political soap operas: Are Akhilesh and Mulayam at...

December 23, 2016
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Has Modi done an Indira?

Last month in an interview I asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi if she would concede that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a similar personality to Indira Gandhi, tough and...

December 9, 2016
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Jayalalithaa: FIlm star politician number one!

As an MP, actor Govinda had one of the worst attendance records in Parliament: He attended less than 10% of the sittings in the Lok Sabha and spoke for...

November 25, 2016
Rajdeep Sardesai
Columns

Demonetisation: Modi risks winning battle, losing war

For those still surprised by prime minister Narendra Modi’s audacious demonetisation gamble, the past maybe a useful guide. In 2007, just ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections, Mr Modi...