The Indian Express
The Financial Express
Latest News
World News
Union Budget
EIW
Market Indicators
Screen
Celebrity Chat
Express Computers
Advertisers Forum
Career India
Business Forum
Match Maker
Express Properties
Palki - Travel & Tours
Information Technology
Astrosurf
Eco-India
Dr Know
Graffiti
Crossword
Drumbeat: Ad Buzzaar
|
Wednesday, May 27, 1998
| |
Stop eating enriched grass
Most people -- this writer included -- live in the dread of man-made scourges like nuclear weapons and algebra. And when the two somehow seem to be ganging up on you it raises visions of a boosted fission apocalypse. You must therefore fight it with all your might, even if it means eating grass. Any equation in a nuclearised scenario that reads NPT plus CTBT plus FMCT and so on can only spell disaster, or so the Indian mind has been persuaded to believe, somewhat understandably, during the years preceding Pokharan-II, and most stupidly in its aftermath.
 |
|
Who wants presidential tyranny?
A nuclear India in the context of the presidential form of government would lead to a governance subject to no judicial scrutiny by the courts. The amendment of the Constitution to do away with the provisions for a Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, which anyhow do not form a part of the basic structure of the Constitution, could easily garner the requisite two thirds MPs "present and voting" since the proposal pushed by Union Home Minister L. K. Advani seems to have the tacit approval of the stalwarts in the Congress opposition.
|
|
The Vajpayee doctrine
The Prime Minister's move to have I.K. Gujral head the Parliament's standing committee on foreign affairs is a welcome sign that he is anxious to take the opposition and the country along on his government's policies. Indeed it involves applying Gujral's famous doctrine of conciliation towards neighbours to the government's dealings with the opposition.
|
Tumhari Shabana
Unable to go in for retaliatory nuclear testing, Pakistan has settled for an almost equally satisfying bout of retaliatory artist-bashing. Tumhari Amrita cannot show in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad because India tested a thermonuclear device at Pokharan. Certainly, but would it be illogical to surmise that the play is on ice partly because a Ghulam Ali concert was disrupted in Mumbai?
|
|
|
|
