ibtl columns

  • Sandhya Jain
  • Narendra Modi prepares to climb the ramparts of the Red Fort

    Monday, May 26,2014, 15:59 IST .

    According to an apocryphal story about Chandragupta Maurya, the conqueror’s first attempt to seize the kingdom of Magadha failed. Wandering in disguise one night, he came across a mother scolding her son for chewing his bread from the middle. “Eat the outer sides first and then move to the centre of the roti. Not like Chandragupta Maurya who straightaway attacks the centre”,..

  • AAP's insidious anti-Hindu agenda

    Wednesday, Apr 02,2014, 15:44 IST .

    Launching his campaign as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate in East Delhi constituency, Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, attacked Narendra Modi and demanded that he ‘come clean on his election funding and subject himself to media scrutiny on his so-called achievements’. Long an academic in the United States and well-known on the capital’s ‘secular circuit..

  • Aam Aadmi Party : Anti-Modi stalking horse

    Tuesday, Mar 11,2014, 23:30 IST .

    The Aam Aadmi Party’s links with questionable activists in India make sense if one studies its ‘Made in UK’ agenda, which explains the seemingly disparate causes it espouses, and its visceral hatred towards the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate. Informed sources say that the AAP core leaders are only foot soldiers whose task is to undermine Narendra ..

  • DNA of Aam Aadmi party: Disruption, Nepotism & Anarchism?

    Saturday, Feb 01,2014, 20:27 IST .

    Overwhelmed at the sheer diversity and apparent chaos of India, American economist and envoy John Kenneth Galbraith dubbed it “functionary anarchy”, a description that has evoked smiles over the decades. It has taken less than a month of the Aam Aadmi Party to turn the national capital into a dysfunctional anarchy. One can only shudder at the fate of the nation should the party&rs..

  • Indian Muslims and the well of victimhood

    Thursday, Jan 23,2014, 18:14 IST .

    Probably the most powerful spectacle at the star-spangled Saifai mahotsav was the cynical disdain of the Samajwadi Party and its Government in Uttar Pradesh towards human suffering, specifically in the Muzaffarnagar relief camps where 34 infants and children are officially admitted to have died of cold and disease. But the deeper lesson that the minority community would do well to ponder is t..

  • Tackling Maoist menace: Return of Salwa Judum

    Tuesday, Oct 22,2013, 18:46 IST .

    As the arc of Maoist violence engulfs Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, the Centre would do well to undo the Supreme Court’s July 2011 judgment that scuttled the Salwa Judum resistance movement against Naxal atrocities in Chhattisgarh. In tacit recognition of the infirmity of this verdict, the Centre last month asked the Odisha government to strengthen internal s..

  • Ethnic cleansing aim in Kishtwar

    Wednesday, Sep 18,2013, 16:40 IST .
    A clinical look at the sequence of rioting in Kishtwar since the targetted violence against the miniscule Pandit community and its forced exodus from the Kashmir valley in 1990 reveals a five-year cycle of aggression, viz., 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, and now 2013, which can hardly be coincidental. The implication is grim: long term plans, most likely in concert with Pakistan’s Inter Serv..
  • Rudra Tandava of Ardhnarishwar : Uttarakhand

    Saturday, Jul 06,2013, 16:27 IST .

    Kedarnath and Badrinath, two most beloved northern tirthas, have for the past two weeks witnessed an apocalyptic spectacle of pralaya with an enraged god and angry goddess stomping a dance of death in fierce tandem. As clouds burst, mountainsides crumbled, and torrential streams hurtled multistoried buildings, hydel projects, roads, humans and animals alike to..

  • India needs a Syria strategy

    Thursday, Jun 06,2013, 17:15 IST .

    Amidst confusing, even contradictory, reports coming out of Syria, it is clear that the world is poised on the brink of a greater conflagration than previously envisioned - a regional war distinct from the US-NATO action in Iraq and Libya, with wider ramifications. Major world capitals have decided their stand vis-à-vis Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. New Delhi is playing ostrich, but may ag..

  • UPA: Stooping to succumb

    Friday, May 10,2013, 23:39 IST .

     

    A Defence Minister who cannot read a hospital register recording the date of birth of his Chief of Army Staff can hardly be expected to read a map and discern Chinese inroads to the extent of an admitted 19-kms (some say 30-kms). So it was no surprise that Mr. AK Anthony remained near-invisible after Beijing’s latest land grab became public, though protection of our bo..
  • Rani ki Jhansi, Rahul ki jhanki

    Friday, Apr 12,2013, 20:16 IST .

    The irrepressible Subramanian Swamy tweeted at Rahul Gandhi’s first major attempt at public speaking: “First he confused a piling of cow dung as a mountain of corpses. Now he says Rani ki Jhansi. As Prof. I say: write 1000 times Jhansi ki Rani!”

    That bloomer, coupled with a string of confused metaphors, saw the social media quickly give the thumbs down to

  • Death penalty... Supreme Court muddies waters

    Thursday, Feb 28,2013, 08:22 IST .

    By granting a six week stay on the death sentence of four aides of ivory and sandalwood smuggler Veerappan, the Supreme Court has heightened emotions in Jammu and Kashmir over the hanging of Afzal Guru, and strengthened feelings in some quarters that the President did an injustice by rejecting the mercy petitions of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru. The Union Home Ministry has also come under a sha..

  • Modi: Aspirational vs Asphyxiated India

    Wednesday, Feb 13,2013, 21:59 IST .

    VHP leader Praveen Togadia’s tasteless response to MIM legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi was not so much a warning in case the latter instigated communal mischief as an open indictment of his bête noire Narendra Modi for alleged complicity in the Gujarat riots of 2002.

    Using Owaisi’s ‘remove the police’ boast as a peg, Togadia bragged that police were a..

  • Women are Mothers and Motherland : President

    Sunday, Jan 27,2013, 23:29 IST .

    In his first presidential address to the nation on the eve of our 64th Republic Day, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee invoked the glorious heritage of Indian civilisation and History to rouse the nation to address its contemporary challenges in a manner befitting our great legacies. It was a glorious departure from mundane speeches of the past, a speech to which routine newspaper reporti..

  • Congress prepares for early elections

    Wednesday, Jan 02,2013, 15:36 IST .

    The Congress party hardcore has always been adept at reading the tea leaves, smoke signals, and other occult signs indicating the way its fortunes are blowing. It is fully aware of its declining credibility since 2009, both at the Centre and in Delhi state. Hence, it views the results of the Gujarat elections, which many see as boosting the prime ministerial prospects of chief minister Narend..

  • FDI & the true face of western capitalism

    Wednesday, Dec 19,2012, 00:29 IST .

    In a confidential memorandum in December 1991, Lawrence Summers, World Bank Chief Economist, urged his colleagues: “‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons”. Those who believe that the transfer of manufacturing f..

  • Abortion: A Hindu perspective

    Thursday, Nov 22,2012, 00:52 IST .

    The medically avoidable, gut-wrenchingly painful death of Savita Halappanavar in an Irish hospital on October 28 brought thousands of Irish citizens, most of them born Catholics, to the streets in heartwarming solidarity with the family of an unknown Indian. Savita was denied an abortion though she was miscarrying, on grounds that it was illegal in the Catholic nation. She protested that she ..

  • Sonia Gandhi on Kashmir secession body

    Tuesday, Nov 06,2012, 23:01 IST .

    UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has unwisely joined a body supporting Kashmir secession because she loves rubbing shoulders with international glitterati. As chairperson, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Ms. Gandhi is co-president of the Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific (FDL-AP), an organization promoting democracy (sic) in this region. Other co-presidents include former Philippines Presi..

  • Judiciary as Reliance Gift Horse

    Saturday, Nov 03,2012, 13:19 IST .

    While appreciating India Against Corruption’s putting the spotlight on Reliance Industries, its face-off with the CAG and reputed role in the exit of Jaipal Reddy from the Petroleum Ministry, the author would like to point out that she had written about the judiciary’s role in facilitating Reliance’s unreasonable demands nearly two years ago in a column in T..

  • Farmer suicides in America and Europe

    Monday, Oct 22,2012, 00:24 IST .

    In what is one of the Free World’s best kept secrets, farmer suicides – a phenomenon popularly associated with India – are rearing their heads in America and Europe, and are becoming difficult to push under the carpet. Though Big Media has largely dodged the story, local newspapers have carried occasional reports. The suicides have been happening for some years now; some sta..

  • Libya, and the Chinese yuan, give new edge to Putin’s Pakistan visit

    Wednesday, Sep 19,2012, 00:54 IST .

    The murder of the US envoy and three other diplomatic staff members in Libya on the night of Sept 11 following telecast on YouTube of a film maligning the Prophet, which inflamed sentiments of Muslims worldwide, has given an entirely new dimension to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pre-scheduled visit to Pakistan early next month. As Washington dithers between containing the fallout ..

  • Thorium holds key to India's energy security

    Thursday, Sep 13,2012, 14:37 IST .

    As diwan of Travancore, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer struggled desperately with the departing colonial rulers to prevent the kingdom’s riches, including its thorium deposits, from falling into the hands of the Congress Party whose leadership he did not trust. Thorium’s importance has been known since the early twentieth century when a German chemist scouted it for the gas mantles indus..

  • UPA compromising Indian nationality

    Thursday, Aug 30,2012, 02:27 IST .

    When a resolute MP chaperones Rohingya Muslims from far eastern Myanmar to Hyderabad in the south without a hitch en route, it is obvious the Centre has consented to compromise nationality. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should explain if the entrenched complicity with the demographic invasion from Bangladesh is the template for his quest for open borders with our western neighbour, and if New..

  • Bodos are the victims in Assam riots

    Monday, Aug 20,2012, 00:06 IST .

    Last month’s violence in Kokrajhar district, Assam, which resulted in 77 dead (so far) and nearly four lakh uprooted from home, their humble hearths torched to cinders, possibly to prevent them from returning to reclaim the vacated lands, was both the consequence of the sharply changing population profile in India’s eastern States, and an attempt to perpetuate and entrench the dem..

  • Chinese whispers in Indian Power Sector

    Thursday, Aug 16,2012, 01:00 IST .

    A television debate following the simultaneous failure of three grids on 31 July revealed India’s plans to integrate its power grid with China, and other neighbours. Not being a subject expert, one cannot opine if this conflicts with current moves by states to ensure ‘islanding’ so that sudden fluctuations in drawing power from the grid do not trigger total blackouts across ..

  • The War against Welfare

    Tuesday, Jul 31,2012, 18:27 IST .

    The collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago was followed by the rise of two unnoticed but related phenomena: first, the West pushed the liberalization agenda on nations that had hitherto resisted integration with its market economy; second, the United States and Europe rapidly demolished the welfare state they had erected after World War II.

    This resulted in the end of job..

  • NATO's proxy war in Syria escalates; Russia-China checkmate UN

    Sunday, Jul 22,2012, 21:14 IST .

    The United States and its European NATO allies along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and of course Israel, are now in a state of undeclared war against Syria, as part of their ultimate goal of containing Iran. That is, until they gather more coalition partners to take on Russia and China. The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has unsubtly weighed in on the side of the NATO aggressors..

  • The Sawan Calculus - Sandhya Jain

    Tuesday, Jul 17,2012, 22:47 IST .

    According to the Hindu panchang, the month of sawan which along with bhadoncomprises India’s monsoon season, began on July 4; rains drenched this parched city on July 5. Was the monsoon on time, or ‘delayed’ as the Met Office kept lamenting? The Union Ministry of Agriculture was clueless how to reassure farmers who sowed the&nbs..

  • Viable middle class key to growth

    Thursday, Jul 05,2012, 00:54 IST .

    The harsh truth of the American economy has forced Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz to admit that conventional wisdom about ‘trickle-down economics’ is a fraud, and that a country without a viable middle-class is teetering at the edge of a precipice. This means that every nation must tax the rich in proportion to the wealth they cream off the economic pie, empower the middle class t..

  • Race for Raisina Hill: Why Pranab Mukherjee, why not Sangma

    Wednesday, Jun 27,2012, 18:06 IST .

    Some weeks ago, as the political ball began rolling to select a candidate for the post of President (and also Vice President a while later), the Catholic Church through The Catholic Secular Forum launched a campaign to demand that the post of President or Vice President be given to a Christian. Never has a Muslim party or organisation or individual ever demanded a position for a Muslim so bra..

  • Move to reclaim US Congress powers

    Tuesday, Jun 19,2012, 11:55 IST .

    Bismarck’s pithy admonition, “Woe to the statesman whose arguments for entering a war are not as convincing at its end as they were at the beginning,” comes to mind as America retreats from the forgot-why-we-fought Afghan war, and seeks excuses for fresh conflict with Syria and Iran. But, as the growing economic crisis squeezes ordinary citizens, members of the US Congress h..

  • 1947 War: Time for Accountability

    Thursday, Jun 07,2012, 18:59 IST .

    By suddenly inviting debate on the interlocutors report on Jammu and Kashmir, especially its startling suggestion to restore the State’s pre-1953 status, the Congress Party has virtually disowned the actions of its longest serving Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, thus diminishing the legitimacy and stature of the political dynasty descended from him. Some experts have added fuel to the..

  • Assange impact: Internet censorship - Sandhya Jain

    Tuesday, May 22,2012, 16:35 IST .

    India’s proposal that the United Nations appoint a 50-member watchdog body to regulate the internet has elicited some sharply divergent opinions. One side maintains that the proposed Committee for Internet Related Polices (CIRP), which would oversee all Internet standards bodies and rule on all Internet-related disputes, is a draconian measure that puts India in the same bracket as regi..

  • Using NGOs to coerce nations - Sandhya Jain

    Tuesday, May 08,2012, 12:32 IST .

    Non-Western nations have long known that non-governmental organizations, ostensibly set up to provide humanitarian services to citizens in their respective countries, such as against police or other public authorities, fighting poverty or environmental degradation, are funded by foreign regimes to serve their agendas. They are in that sense a tool of coercive diplomacy, or war by other means...

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