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Thursday, May 7, 1998

	A fraud in Mumbai The great city of Mumbai is being run by a Mayor-in-Council, a new system of local governance no one knows much about or understands. In consigning the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act of 1888 to the scrap-heap and altering the basic structure of civic administration, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena said he was acting in the true spirit of the Constitution.		Let the people control population The last time Dalit Ezhilmalai made news, it was when he refused to sign the "shut-up-or-get-out" ultimatum issued to Ramakrishna Hegde by the AIADMK law-makers in a show of stage managed bellicosity. For the BJP, Dalit Ezhilmalai may have been the proverbial St George taking on the dragon of dissent within a creaky coalition, but that hasn't made much difference to the population clock ticking away relentlessly at the AIIMS crossing in New Delhi.
	Non-lethal shooting Kashmir finally has conclusive evidence to prove that life in the Valley is returning to normal. The fact that a film is being shot in Gulmarg ten years after the last crew packed up is far more compelling than any election successfully held, or any representation to the United Nations.		Fading Front Monday's United Front rally in Hyderabad was an eloquent political contrast to the show put up at the same venue barely six months ago by parties under the same signboard. Chandrababu Naidu, as the UF convener and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, held centrestage then, as he kicked off the Front's poll campaign with a call to crush "communal forces" besides the Congress in the battle of the ballot.

The last Maharaja
I first set eyes on His Highness when, as a young boy, I went visiting my maternal grandparents. There he stood, resplendent in his royal robes, crowned by the traditional headgear of the rulers of Travancore, and looking every inch the proud Kshatriya prince. Beneath the coloured portrait, in golden letters was inscribed, `Maj. Gen. His Highness Sri Padmanabha Dasa Bala Rama Varma, Maharaja of Travancore'.

The Khan of bombs
More than a quarter century after then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, smarting from the vivisection of his country by India, gathered 50 of Pakistan's top scientists in a tent in Multan and promised them the earth if they manufactured an atomic bomb, Pakistani scientists have not only produced the goods, but also the means to deliver them.