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Congress (Sonia)
Congress chief Sitaram Kesri has done the obvious when he projected Sonia Gandhi as the party's prime ministerial candidate. The moment she decided to campaign, it was certain that Congress politics will henceforth revolve around her. The party's campaign so far clearly suggests that it is Rajiv Gandhi's widow who calls the shots in the party.
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Political prowling
The volte-face by Bihar leader Raghunath Jha, until the other day a close associate of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav, is unlikely to cause ripples in Bihar's pre-election scenario. Yet the fact that Jha has coolly attributed his shiftover to the Samata-BJP combine to the denial of a RJD ticket to him is another sign of the sharp deterioration in the country's political values.
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Gandhiji as a leitmotif
It is easy to guess that a strong common sense at times, more than political sagacity, made Gandhiji a leader extraordinary, that cast a spell across all strata, irrespective of attitude and vocation. We may as well mention about his sense of discipline or postulates relating to punctuality, cleanliness, keeping things in order and various other matters now fast losing their meaning.
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"Whoever thinks I launched a new party is wrong"
Mamata Banerjee, who began her career as a parliamentarian by humbling the CPI(M) stalwart Somnath Chatterjee at the hustings in 1984, has come a long way. From a perennial Congress rebel, she has recently assumed the leadership of her new party, Trinamool Congress, which she calls the real Congress in West Bengal.
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The United States of Fiction
While explaining why novels lie -- they can do nothing else -- Mario Vargas Llosa writes: "Men do not live by truth alone; they also need lies: those that they invent freely, not those that are imposed on them; those that appear as they are, not smuggled in beneath the clothes of history. Fiction enriches their existence, completes them and, fleetingly, compensates them for this tragic condition which is our lot: always to desire and dream more than we can actually achieve."
That dynastic subversion of the Navy
When the emergency was clamped on the nation in June '75, most of the instruments of the state had been debauched. Indira Gandhi had pretty much killed the Congress party, which was one vehicle, especially under her father, Nehru, of ensuring that a vast country like India was ruled by consensus. She destroyed the powers of the chief ministers and damaged the federal structure.
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