Opinions and Editorials

• This refers to Arun Jaitley's 'Hairsplitting on terror' . Jaitley is right in arguing for a more consolidated and hard-line approach to terrorism.

India's political discourse hit another low with former Orissa Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik and his Congress colleague Nalinikanta Mohanty's allegation that the Orissa floods are "manmade", intended to focus attention away from the Kandhamal violence.

Whenever I rummage through the attic of my memory, my favourite pullouts are Shimla reminiscences. At the risk of being labelled as Simla-obsessed by my progeny, I can mull over my days there till listeners don't ever bother suppressing yawns. When I think of Shimla, I think of my growing-up haunt of yore, not this bizarre concrete jungle persistently smelling of you know what.

Being gay in India is to know the brute power of state and society in the most immediate, humiliating ways - the entire spectrum from police harassment to social ostracisation.

• The Nanavati Commission has said that the burning of the train at Godhra was a pre-planned conspiracy 'In Part 1, Nanavati concludes...' ).

In showering praise on US President George W. Bush for his personal commitment to implement the civil nuclear initiative, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has drawn predictable flak from his opponents at home.

Gita would bring some utility items for our Bangalore home whenever she visited her old hometown Bombay, where she had familiar shopping haunts like Lohar Chawl.

Off with their heads - BJP President Rajnath Singh told party workers at a rally in Madhya Pradesh that anyone who waves the Pakistani flag or says Pakistan Zindabad should be gunned down.

The Nanavati Commission report - or part of it - has been tabled in the Gujarat assembly. Inevitably, responses have been sharply divided along predictable lines. The Left has called it "partisan"; the Congress has said that partiality was expected; Lalu Prasad Yadav has said that nobody will believe it anyway.

The 'encounter' in New Delhi, has consumed most Urdu newspapers this fortnight, as several papers find it difficult to accept the Delhi Police version of events.

As far as US presidential elections go, animals are inevitably sucked into the contest, at least figuratively.

India has joined dozens of countries around the world in banning the import of dairy products from China.

In deciding to deepen the peace process with Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has bet on the proposition that strengthening the democratic forces next door is in India's own interest.

Labour Minister Oscar Fernandes's response to Monday's brutal murder of a Noida-based CEO has provoked justifiable outrage.

In its editorial titled "UPA's Royal Confusion" in the latest issue of the Organiser, the RSS journal writes.

Oversharing is an affliction of our times, but surely we can do without the police's ritual confessionals about the terror investigations, which serve no other purpose than to undercut their own efforts.

In the latest issue of CPM organ People's Democracy, General Secretary Prakash Karat argues that the nuclear deal signifies the lining up of India behind the US global strategy and warns that the plight Pakistan finds itself in today is an intimation of the perils of a strategic embrace of the imperialist superpower.

For many years, while India has claimed that there is a "market determined exch-ange rate", in reality the exchange rate has been distorted by RBI's large-scale trading.