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2014 Lok Sabha Polls, Meghnad Desai column, Indian Express column General election, Rahul Gandhi, NArendra Modi,  Arvind Kejriwal Just think of it. The  three main contenders most often mentioned as likely prime ministers, or even the next seven or so, were all born after 1947. Except for PM hopefuls Lal Krishna Advani, Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh Yadav — all else are children of independent India. The majority of electors were also born post 1947 and a large proportion after Emergency. Had Rajiv Gandhi lived and become PM in 1991, Indian politics may have shifted to a younger generation. But that moment was lost. The premature deaths of their fathers has also propelled some yuvarajs into frontline positions, but in the Congress they cannot get to the top as the slot is pre-booked. The Janata Party movement brought students into politics. Hence, we have Lalu Prasad (born in 1948) and Nitish Kumar (1951) in Bihar. Narendra Modi (1950) is of Janata vintage, while Arvi...

Dismissing reports that BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was overshadowing the party, senior party leader Venkaiah Naidu cited the example of how former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee wanted Modi to resign as Gujarat Chief Minister after the 2002 riots, but he had to give in to the party’s “collective decision” against the move. This is evidence that no individual leader is above the party, said Naidu, who was the BJP president at the time of the Gujarat riots. “No BJP leader is afraid of Modi... He is one of our colleagues and the darling of the masses today. In the BJP, the president presides, team decides,” said Naidu, speaking at The Indian Express Idea Exchange programme on Friday. “Even during Vajpayee’s regime, decisions were taken collectively... Atalji opined that the Gujarat Chief Minister (Modi) should adhere to raj dharma and step down (over the 2002 riots). But the party collectively decided that he should contin...

Dismissing reports that BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was overshadowing the party, senior party leader Venkaiah Naidu cited the example of how former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee wanted Modi to resign as Gujarat Chief Minister after the 2002 riots, but he had to give in to the party’s “collective decision” against the move. This is evidence that no individual leader is above the party, said Naidu, who was the BJP president at the time of the Gujarat riots. “No BJP leader is afraid of Modi... He is one of our colleagues and the darling of the masses today. In the BJP, the president presides, team decides,” said Naidu, speaking at The Indian Express Idea Exchange programme on Friday. “Even during Vajpayee’s regime, decisions were taken collectively... Atalji opined that the Gujarat Chief Minister (Modi) should adhere to raj dharma and step down (over the 2002 riots). But the party collectively decided that he should contin...

RUSSIA: Russia's ministry of foreign affairs was not amused by the unorthodox statement from the US State Department under the title "President Putin's Fiction: 10 False Claims About Ukraine," which purported to rebut a series of assertions by Vladimir Putin in the eye-catching format of a top-10 list. The foreign ministry's own statements have an ornate formal tone, garnished with thick irony and rhetorical flourishes, and this casual treatment of the Russian president's words in the State Department list, released Wednesday, must have been jarring. A ministry spokesman, Alexander K Lukashevich, provided an angry five-paragraph response on Thursday afternoon, calling the list "shocking, not as much for its primitive distortion of reality as its cynicism and overt 'double standards.'" "The State Department is trying to play on a shamelessly one-sided interpretation of events, as if there was not plentiful evidence of atrocities commi...

Russia’s de facto annexation of the Crimea — which President Vladimir Putin says is a humanitarian intervention — has exposed ugly motives all round. On February 22, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, panicking over public protests calling for early elections and a return to the 2004 Constitution, abandoned his violent crackdown on the protesters and fled the capital, Kiev. The national parliament voted to remove him from office and impeach him; Speaker Oleksander Turchynov took over as interim president, and the assembly decided to hold elections on May 25. Mr. Turchynov has since then made political appointments by decree, and some of his choices have extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic backgrounds. On March 1, Russian troops moved into the eastern province of Crimea, without facing any resistance; the Russian military had, in any case, retained their Sevastopol naval base and various airfields under an arrangement made after the Soviet Union was abolished in 199...

Ukraine threatens to become the Syria of Eastern Europe. And like Syria, civil war could ultimately decimate a vibrant and ethnically diverse society, and a rich civilisational legacy The political crisis in Ukraine, that has now entered its fourth month, is rapidly reaching a point of no return. Territorial fissures in the country along political, linguistic and ethnic lines, the real possibility of civil war, and the emergence of the southern (autonomous) Ukrainian republic of Crimea as a potential, international military flashpoint, are among the different aspects of the current situation in the country, which is the second largest state in Europe. The focus has shifted from Kiev to the southern province of Crimea where the interim government that deposed former President Viktor Yanukovych has not been recognised. With its complex ethnic mix and historical past, the region has traditionally had strong ties with Russia. Russia has stepped up its military presence in Crimea — ...

Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh to create Telangana on Friday came under judicial scrutiny with the Supreme Court agreeing to examine it and sought response from the Centre. A bench headed by Justice H.L. Dattu issued notice to the Centre on a batch of petitions filed by several people, including former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Reddy, challenging bifurcation of the State. The court favoured interference of a Constitution bench for hearing the issue and said the larger bench can consider whether stay can be granted on bifurcation of the State. The petitioners contended that the bifurcation of the State is illegal and unconstitutional. They questioned Centre’s decision to pass the Bill pertaining to bifurcation of the State in Parliament despite it being rejected by the State Assembly. There are around 18 petitions filed in the apex court challenging the bifurcation of the State. The apex court had on February 7 and 17 respectively refused to entertain petitions challe...

Growing up as I did reading The Hindu’s sports pages, I was taken by the phrase “pyrrhic victory”. Clearly, the paper’s sports desk was too: it made the headlines an impressive number of times, usually to describe dead rubber Ranji matches. Since then, it has been among my unstated goals as a writer to ­deploy the phrase without sounding a cliché. This has been an unfulfilling enterprise in these minimalist times, where victories are hard to come by, let alone those laced with failure. Until now. Last week, when Seemanto Roy, scion of the Sahara Parivar, read out a message from his father Subrata describing his recent arrest as “the Best ­Honour My Country Could Give Me”, I knew I had my phrase. At the end of a long, and in the words of the Supreme Court, “outrageously ridiculous” cat-and-mouse game with Sahara, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has won a pyrrhic victory. Between 2009 — when it first ...

The refusal by two eminent jurists to join the Lokpal Search Committee is symptomatic of the credibility crisis that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime faces in its last days. Even the process of putting in place an independent anti-corruption ombudsman has been engulfed in controversy, exposing the government to the charge that it is in an unseemly hurry to appoint the body before the expiry of its term. At the very first meeting of the Selection Committee, Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, objected to the inclusion of senior advocate P.P. Rao in the selection panel as the fifth member, and her objection was overruled. Senior advocate Fali Nariman declined to be on the Search Committee, voicing the fear that in the two-stage selection process, “the most competent, the most independent and the most courageous will get overlooked.” Retired Supreme Court judge, Justice K.T. Thomas, went through the Rules framed under the Lokpal and Lokayukta A...

Pakistan’s response to terrorism continues to be characterised by confusion, lack of national consensus on a way forward, lack of will and capacity to fight the menace and the consequent creeping surrender of the state to extremists and terrorists Despite being a country subject to and used to frequent terror attacks, the alarming upsurge in terror-related violence in January in Pakistan made people sit up. Nearly 40 personnel of the army and other security forces were killed in terror attacks between January 19 and 22, including one near the GHQ in Rawalpindi; 24 Shias were killed near Quetta by Sunni extremists on January 21. Daily killings in Karachi and attacks against polio vaccinators continue. These incidents are a reminder, if one was needed, of the enormity of Pakistan’s terror conundrum. Yet, a large section of Pakistan’s political class believes that the terror challenge can be met through dialogue. Slow track to dialogue A conditional offer of talks by t...

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said he will discuss United Bank of India’s bad loan crisis with the Reserve Bank Governor later this week. “United Bank is a special case. We will deal with that. It’s not an alarming case...UBI issue will be discussed separately when the governor comes here on (March) 7th and we know the path forward. It will be resolved on 7th,” he said. The Finance Minister is scheduled to address the Reserve Bank of India board here on March 7. Besides the UBI issue, Chidambaram will discuss matters related to new bank licences. Kolkata—based UBI posted a net loss of Rs 1,238 crore in the three months ended December, during which its gross non—performing assets (NPAs) surged to Rs 8,546 crore from Rs 2,964 crore at the end of March last year. UBI has recovered Rs 400 crore in cash and has upgraded Rs 800 crore worth of accounts. NPAs have been reduced by Rs 1,200 crore, Chidambaram said after meeting with chief exec...

Concerned over rising non-performing assets, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday asked public sector banks to focus on recovery of bad loans, which happen to be high among large corporate accounts. Addressing a press conference after reviewing performance of PSU banks, he also said that credit disbursal to medium-sized industry has declined and was only “satisfactory” in the agricultural sector. “Biggest challenge facing the public sector banks is NPAs and their asset qualities,” he said, adding that a large part of the meeting with banks’ chiefs was focused on bad loans and the steps needed for the recovery. Pointing out that NPAs were “high in large corporate sectors” and small industries, although they were down for the real estate segment, Chidambaram said banks have been told to focus on recovery. NPAs or bad loans of PSU banks rose by 28.5 per cent from Rs 1.83 lakh crore in March, 2013 to Rs 2.36 lakh crore in September last ...

A Canada-based bank specializing in bitcoins says it has closed after computer hackers stole its digital currency. The closure of the Flexcoin bank comes just a week after the collapse of Mt. Gox, a major bitcoin exchange. The Japan-based Mt. Gox also linked its demise to an electronic heist. The twin failures of Mt. Gox and Flexcoin will likely raise more doubts about bitcoin’s ability to establish itself as an alternative currency. In a notice on Tuesday, Flexcoin says 896 bitcoins were stolen from its online vault. That translates into a loss of about $600,000, based on bitcoin’s current trading value. Unlike banks dealing in government-backed currencies, Flexcoin’s losses aren’t covered by deposit insurance. The Alberta, Canada, bank says it can’t recover from the setback. Bitcoins that Flexcoin kept offline, or in “cold storage,” remain secure, according to the bank. Although Flexcoin didn’t provide details, bitcoins stored this ...

The UPA Government on Tuesday launched an attack on the “Gujarat economic model”, with Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma saying that though BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi takes credit for Gujarat's pro-investments image, it is in fact the third most indebted State. “Nearly Rs 1.38 trillion is the debt of the State,” Mr. Sharma said. Latest Reserve Bank data on State indebtedness released in Janaury, however, shows that Gujarat has in fact outperformed the target set by the Thirteenth Finance Commission (TFC) for it on the crucial parameter of debt as a percentage of the gross state domestic product (GSDP). Against the TFC target of 27.6 per cent, Gujarat achieved a debt-GSDP ratio of 23.2. It ranks ninth on the non-special category States list on the parameter. Addressing a press conference here, Mr. Sharma further said that Mr. Modi's economic vision for India was nothing bu...

Vladimir Putin ordered tens of thousands of Russian troops participating in military exercises near Ukraine’s border to return to their bases as US Secretary of State John Kerry was on his way to Kiev. Tensions remained high in the strategic Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea with troops loyal to Moscow fired warning shots at protesting Ukrainian soldiers. It was not clear if Putin’s move was an attempt to heed the West’s call to de-escalate the crisis that has put Ukraine’s future on the line. It came as Kerry was on his way to Kiev to meet with the new Ukrainian leadership that deposed a pro-Russian president, and has accused Moscow of a military invasion. The Kremlin, which does not recognise the new Ukrainian leadership, insists it made the move in order to protest millions of Russians living there. Warning shots in Crimea region Today, pro-Russian troops who had taken control of the Belbek air base in the Crimea region fired warning shots into the air as ar...