Opinions and Editorials

The editorial in the latest issue of the RSS journal Organiser titled "Maoists are Killers, Terrorists.

That the MNS goons who roughed up Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi in the Maharashtra assembly need to be dealt with sternly is obvious.

Last month, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena graduated from an angry mob to a sizeable elected force in the state's politics.

Even by the Samajwadi Party's recent standards of personalised politics, the campaign for the Firozabad bypoll was remarkable.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech to the World Economic Forum's India meeting was remarkable for its clarity.

It was the unlikeliest of developments to be passed off as a birthday present. The truce between Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and the Reddy brothers was ribbon-wrapped as a show of unity, what Yeddyurappa called a "birthday gift" for the BJP's L.K. Advani, who turned 82 on Sunday.

From the stick to the carrot. Instead of making a rural stint mandatory for doctors, the health ministry has now outlined a plan to incentivise them to work in villages. It is dangling a hefty quota in postgraduate diplomas after a three-year stint in a rural area.

Thailand and Cambodia do squabble often. Their current spat centres around the fugitive former premier of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. Cambodian PM Hun Sen has invited Thaksin — convicted for corruption charges, and living under self-imposed exile — to be his economic advisor, irking Thai nationalists.

In a moment of plain-speaking that is all-too-rare at summits of this sort, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers this weekend that "we are only about halfway through dealing with the causes of the crisis.

It is a sign of the isolation in which the Bharatiya Janata Party's state units are beginning to perceive their political self-interest that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan created a controversy where none need have existed.

The cabinet clearance of government divestment from some state-owned companies, announced following a cabinet meeting on Thursday, is a good start to what will hopefully be a winter in which UPA-II will finally start flying reformist colours.

What is 1.3 billion divided by 289? That's the number of Indians per medical college, a number so high it is almost criminal.

Listen again to Sachin Tendulkar, just after his 175 at Hyderabad: "It was one of my best innings... but in the end it was very disappointing." In that summation of an exceptional innings, he could be seen to be recalling an entire career in the service of Indian cricket.

There was uproar in Pakistan's political and media circles this week over the intended tabling of the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) in Parliament on Monday.

If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Jammu and Kashmir was a fresh sentence in a changing conversation, here's something that renders one speechless: the Union home ministry has banned pre-paid cell-phone connections in the state.

Last year when Haile Gebrselassie opted out of the marathon at the Beijing Olympics, it was not part of the general hysteria that had preceded the Games about the city's air quality, anxiety that soon enough evaporated in a run of blue-sky days.

If there is one sector that is visibly the intersection of backroom politics, crony capitalism and serious threats to India's internal security, it is mining.