He had to go
The Vajpayee-led government has displayed some will at last. The sacking of Union Minister for Communications Buta Singh came at a time when it seemed that it would allow itself to be interminably buffeted by circumstances beyond its control. Despite the Supreme Court having recently ordered that he be prosecuted in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case, Buta Singh himself carried on as if nothing had happened.
A minister calls
Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha may have appeared to take with him a well-worn message to Washington: India remains open for business. So what, his audience might have shrugged in reply, accustomed by now to that promise from successive Indian governments. No matter. Given the shrill and jingoistic pre-election noises in the BJP and the confusion it strategically creates about its own policies, this was a necessary exercise.
In big brother's shadow
I am now resigned to the fact. Flaunting one's millions is the norm of this age, and a walk through the lanes of my neighbourhood in Delhi confirms it to me every day. What with the exterior of every house vying with that of the next in the flashiest possible use of highly inappropriate material, the deep, human need for visibility is painfully obvious.
The price of inequity
In the very hour of its triumph, the BJP is at its most vulnerable. It has triumphed by both presenting itself as the political agency of Hindutva and a more Hinduised Congress. It has triumphed by building an alliance in which it has no allies except the Shiva Sena. These make it vulnerable enough. But its Achilles' heel is that it is on test. It has to deliver.
Gun vs media in the Valley
With media attention fixed squarely on the general elections, a positive development in Kashmir has escaped our attention. The chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Maulvi Omar Farooq, deserves our thanks for directing our attention towards the freedom the Kashmir print media is beginning to enjoy with hard-hitting editorials against the culture of the gun which had not long ago threatened to destroy the unique Kashmiri culture of reverence for all religions and true acceptance of unity in diversity.
"A more sensitive person should have committed suicide"
This is a continuation of "This diseased insect" carried on Monday where Union urban development minister Ram Jethmalani talks about the controversies on the Indian political scenario.
