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Drumbeat: Ad Buzzaar

Politics	Business	Expressions	General
World	Sports	Leisure	States

Wednesday, May 20, 1998

	Charming the media Jaswant Singh's performance before foreign correspondents on Monday should provoke the question: why was this media savvy not in evidence immediately after the nuclear tests? If it had come earlier this country would have had a better chance of convincing a disapproving world that it had a legitimate point of view, and to put it across.		The Benazir bomb Now for a quick riddle. How does an out-of-work former Pakistani prime minister spend her free time? Plotting to make a political comeback, right? So how does an out-of-work former prime minister, with more criminal cases against her than our very own Jayalalitha Jairam and with 17 of her Swiss bank accounts frozen by the authorities, spend her free time?
	Escape to death Two months ago, a teenager in Lalitpur, Jhansi, consumed Celphos -- an Aluminum Phosphide insecticide — available at Rs 10 a bottle. He had sold 20 kg of wheat for a lottery ticket and lost the gamble. His was one of the scores of such suicides that came in from Lalitpur this year. The local police station is now maintaining a separate file on the Celphos suicides.		Why the Buddha smiled Five centuries before the Christian era the powerful and ambitious Ajatasatru attacked the Licchavi confederacy led by Vaisali. Hearing of this conflict between his Magadhan disciples and his Sakya kinsmen, the Buddha sighed that perfect peace would never come until all the nations of the earth were equally mighty.

When paranoia goes ballistic
As the Indian middle class celebrates the nuclear tests, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reason to hope that its method of politics can work again. If the hype surrounding the explosions eerily resembles pre-Demolition Indian politics, it is because the ruling party desperately needs a more hysterical reaction this time from the masses.