Excuse for misrule
While the Centre is ostensibly committed to better relations with the states, some of its leading lights have been displaying an obscene eagerness to use Article 356 to settle political scores. It was all very well for A.B.
Vajpayee to demand the ouster of Rabri Devi before the election. Campaign trail rhetoric is often purely of entertainment value.
Putting Delhi in its place
The BJP as India's first nationalist government has an ideological commitment to the country, compromises must have a limit. Equally important is its ability to usher in decentralisation which will mark the shifting of power from Delhi to the states. A strong India requires the states to grow as regional power centres; nationalism and decentralisation are not contradictory but complimentary.
Learning to live with Ghauri
The acquisition of the Ghauri surface-to-surface missile (SSM), true or otherwise, is a logical extension of the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme. They had the weapon, now they have reportedly acquired the vehicle to carry it. Its range of 1500 km, classifying it as an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), should put most of western India within its strike envelope.
Under the operation table
Indian women could not be used as guinea pigs...'' Justice A.S. Anand, when he pronounced these words in last month's judgement banning the use and sale of Quinacrine for female sterilisation, was only reiterating a basic article of human rights.
Honouring the word
The BJP government's decision to go along with the United Front government's wheat imports programme should come as a great relief to those who feared that the new government would open up each deal entered into by its predecessor. Not necessarily because there was definite proof of corruption, but just because there were allegations of wrong-doing.
Drama in cutout country
What, will these hands ne'er be clean? All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' laments Lady Macbeth hysterically, while walking in her sleep. One wonders whether it is the same person who comforted her husband, shivering with a blood-stained dagger in his hand, saying, `A little water clears us of this deed'.
