On the road to Liberty

The serial bomb blasts have failed to shake the popular resolve not to be provoked. Tragically, the political consensus necessary to fight the perpetrators of terrors have failed to crystallise so far. It is clear from these attacks that the intention of the terrorists were to provoke a wider flare up among different sections of society. By refusing to get provoked the common man on the street have risen to this challenge, therefore, defeating the very purpose of these cowardly attacks on innocent people. I wrote this article in the aftermath of the serial bomb blasts that rocked Jaipur and Ahmedabad on 25th and 26th July 2008, and this was after the blasts in Jaipur in May. Serial bombs fail to shake popular resolve, yet political consensus to fight terror elude In the 16 serial blasts that rocked Ahmedabad city on Saturday, 49 lives have been lost so far. On Friday, nine explosions in Bangalore in the afternoon had killed two, and injured quite a few. With these two latest series of ...

One reason why politicians have fallen in public esteem is because they are not seen to be operating in an open market, I argue in this article, " Market reform in politics ", published in the Mint, on 22 July 2008. The run-up to the trust vote has been as exciting as a Twenty20 (T20) game of cricket. Fortune is fluctuating every hour. It is a cliff-hanger! But rather than enjoy the political game, commentators are lamenting that high principles of parliamentary democracy have degenerated to lowly bazaar bargaining. It’s time our politicians took a leaf out of the T20 experience and created a legitimate market for politics. Indian Premier League’s success was not in the T20 format. Beginning with the private ownership of teams to auctioning of the players, branding and marketing, cricket was commercialized as never before. It produced quality entertainment for the paying public and unearthed new talent. In contrast to cricket, parliamentary discourse is handicapped by accusa...

The politicos at the G8 summit in Japan, seem to have drawn their lessons from the Kyoto Protocol, two decades earlier, when they burned their fingers by accepting short-term goals of emission cuts by 2012. The hard reality is that the political leaders can no longer afford to sacrifice the poor today, at the altar of climate change, for the sake of the rich tomorrow. India can legitimately play a leadership role and change the climate of discussion on climate change, I write in " Economic climate at G8 overshadowed talk of climate change ", published in the Mint, on 17 July 2008. “It is the economy, stupid!” The economic and political concerns dampened the desire of world leaders at the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Japan to ride the hot air balloon of climate change. That’s no surprise. In any contest between a present crisis and future threat, the present always wins. The G-8 leaders are hardcore politicians and recognize that in hard times, politicians must not get carr...