Opinions and Editorials

Crises precipitate summits and summits usually spew a bunch of banalities. 2009 witnessed several summits — the G-8, a few G-20s with different levels of government representation, and a just-concluded World Summit on Food Security, convened by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome.

Air India needs some drastic brand therapy. But why would it wilfully destroy the portly Maharajah, arguably the last shred of emotional connection with the airline? Created for an internal letterhead by Air India's Bobby Kooka and JWT, the Maharajah's showed up in the unlikeliest places — sumo wrestler, Spanish matador and more — smiling benevolently over Times Square and Kemps Corner.

In an ideal situation, the agitation by sugarcane farmers and the nation's political opposition (and at least one constituent of the Union government) would have ended in the only desirable, and long-desired, outcome — an end to our long history of politicisation of sugar, of its procurement prices arbitrarily determined by both the Centre and the states.

The controversy over the Sino-US joint statement in Beijing last week over the Chinese role in the subcontinent has set the stage for an honest conversation between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama on whether and how the two sides could cooperate in the eastern and western parts of Asia.

When you think of Amitabh Bachchan today, what is the first thing you see? It is the parcel. And the packaging. A Harlequin jacket. A Pied Piper's hat. A long ostrich feather trailing the headgear. Zircon, zari, zardozi. All accoutrements. All embellishments. The actor who has been our steadfast screen companion for four prolific decades has been buried under this ever-burgeoning mound.

Obama's China trip has been sharply criticised by most US newspapers as being unnecessarily deferential and obtaining no real concessions.

The sale of shares of up to 60 public sector enterprises by the Central government will have many advantages.

North Block hopes it has found a lever to increase bank lending — money will come in (capital infusion in state-owned banks) if money goes out (loans to business).

Inevitably, expectations from Copenhagen have been tamped down by now. Climate action will not come from one dramatic global compact next month. And India has decided to be big about the matter, offering to submit a national communication on climate action every two years, which could become the basis for negotiating with the world and bargaining for technological or financial payback.

So umpires in India have started calling bowlers for chucking and it is nice to see a forgotten law being implemented! Some bowlers, especially those who have played first class cricket for eight or ten years might choose to disagree with the current practice, they are entitled to be a bit confused, but really in our part of the world we had no alternative.

During the last days of the 14th Lok Sabha, its speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, drew a dispiriting profile of the House.

Former wrestler and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav distancing himself from Kalyan Singh has not impressed the Urdu world.

The 11th International meeting of the Communist and Workers Parties is being held in New Delhi this week, at a time when the Left in India is facing its worst-ever crisis and is fast losing support even in traditional strongholds like West Bengal and Kerala.

At a Thai restaurant in Islamabad, after the first day's play in the final Test in 2004, Rahul Dravid politely declined to stay for dessert, saying he needed to sleep because he had to bat the "whole day tomorrow".

The disgraceful conduct of a UK-based Muslim charity with the victim-survivors of the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat could have been ignored as an isolated, if highly deplorable act.

More than most other people, Nandan Nilekani knows how to turn information into hard currency. The induction of this former head of an iconic IT company as chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was meant to send out a larger message: UPA-II was willing to learn lessons from India Inc.

Surprisingly, there was in the Indira Gandhi eulogies very little discussion on her food and agriculture policies apart from some acerbic non-factual diatribes.

Burden of their song The editorial in the latest issue of RSS mouthpiece Organiser, titled "Vande Mataram.

No matter how much we try to make up for our historic underinvestment in roads by frantically constructing flyovers and highways, India will never be truly on the move unless it addresses the dark question of injury and mortality.

It is a comment on the over-centralised nature of our political parties that the Congress has sustained such a buzz with its election programme for its youth wing.