'Donation' seats will thrive so long their market does
Only the luckiest of the ones who take up science in class XI escape the vagaries of the joint entrance examination and the trauma of not emerging a ``giant’’ (some ingenuity went into the christening...
View ArticleNo pride in Women's Reservation Bill..
I am what Mr Sharad Yadav would call a parkati aurat . And I am opposed to the Women’s Reservation Bill, athough I doubt I would go to such a vehement extent to register it. It may make for great...
View ArticleMoney takes over healthcare
Whoever said there is no business like show business was obviously not looking at the right places. Because in these recessionary times if there is one business that is flowering no end it is the...
View ArticleFleeing patients prove hospitals are sick
Hospitals are not prisons. And it is not always that patients scoot from hospitals. If suspected H1N1 patients are doing so – a man allegedly absconded from RML Hospital within hours of being admitted...
View ArticleMyth of the 'satisified' power consumer
I confess I was not in Delhi during the pre-power-privatization days. So, I am hardly a competent judge of whether things have really improved on the power front. But I have always wondered how...
View ArticleFighting gunpower with the willow
It’s a tale of two nations whose trysts with violence have made headlines the world over. Both have battled terrorism and internal strife over the last few months. One was attacked while touring the...
View ArticleMaya's 'megalomania' lives another day
Those of you who have watched Satyajit Ray’s Hirok Rajar Deshe, the second film of the Goopy-Bagha trilogy might remember the last scene. Hundreds of people with infectious enthusiasm uproot the statue...
View ArticleAll for a Lutyen's address
It is the most powerful address in the country alright but the lengths to which out politicians go for an address in Lutyen’s Delhi is preposterous at best and outrageous at worst. Take George...
View ArticlePrivate hospitals immune to H1N1
The threats of “fall in line or else…” have been coming thick and fast from health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Yet when we tried recently to reason with a top honcho of a very prominent private...
View ArticleOf brides and vegetarians
A friend’s friend I met recently is very sad. He wants to get married and he is not getting a girl. The reason: his parents want him to get married to an extremely rare entity called the vegetarian...
View ArticleIt happens only in Congress
What credentials does a 35+ industrialist with a controversial past and a common enough name have to the gaddi of the chief minister? None except that his father was called Y S Rajashekahara Reddy who...
View ArticleWho is a Delhiite?
When home minister P Chidambaram asked Delhiites to learn to behave in order to play good hosts a year later, he was mouthing possibly the most subscribed to view of residents of Delhi – something...
View ArticleTwo Minute Nobel for Barack Obama?
Being the first black president of the United States of America has big perks. Sometimes as big as the Nobel Peace Prize. That too within less than a year in office and without any significant...
View ArticleWhose Games is it, anyway?
Will Delhi 2010 actually be an egg on the face or are all these now-angry-now-placatory sound bites emanating from the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) actually the function of a “racial bias”–...
View ArticleThank God He Failed JEE
I hope lots and lots of parents in the country read about how Venkataraman Ramakrishnan who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry this year could not clear either the medical entrance or the JEE – an...
View ArticleKing Khan Shows the Way Where Prince Falters
I am no fan of Shah Rukh Khan. But kudos to him for standing up to the Shiv Sena where greater men from the industry, tremulous at the prospect of losing business to rampaging Sena goons have...
View ArticlePranabda, Thank You for More Banks
The moment I heard Mr Pranab Mukherjee talking about new banking licences in his budget speech, I went: "Yippie! Serves you right you private sector banks. There will be some more breathing down your...
View ArticleFelicitate John Terry, someone
I am not a very keen football fan - just one who occasionally sits down for a match. And promptly goes off to sleep if there are more than 20 goalless minutes at a stretch. Okay, make it thirty is the...
View ArticleReservation as panacea does not work
It has been sixty years since the constitution of India that guaranteed reservation for people from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes came into effect. Reservation was in place even before...
View ArticleAusterity suits us, voters, just fine
It is interesting how extravagance is such an integral part of governance in our country that the government of the day can make heavy weather of a decision – ministers and bureaucrats traveling...
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