Opinions and Editorials

You have only to have a conversation in south Mumbai to realise how far away it is from India. Much passion is expended in packed - what was that about a downturn? - restaurants over the latest prices of (already overpriced) flats and the latest cars (imported, not Indian).

The BJP appears to be afflicted by procrastination. It had an opportunity to go into the causes of its Lok Sabha defeat and chalk the way ahead at its so-called Chintan Baithak in Shimla but has chosen to finalise its future strategy only in October when the National Executive meets.

Like many families in North India, dining table conversation in my house frequently veers around to the subject of Partition. My grandfather - a prominent Congressman and freedom fighter who went to jail during those years of struggle - was from Sialkot, now in Pakistan.

The video of the week has to be this encounter in Singapore between a masked Amar Singh and a masked reporter of the NCR TV channel. I knew you wouldn't believe it, so I took a screen grab with my cellphone which I'm willing to share on the internet. It's time-stamped 10:50 pm, Tuesday, August 18.

In the last few years, we have been witnessing a sudden rash of objections to the use of traditional verbal expressions, metaphors and similes in our films, plays and other literary works. Such expressions have been part of our everyday speech in all our languages and dialects for centuries. Until less than a decade ago, none of this was seen as offensive.

When I moved into the Nizamuddin West area in Delhi, friends asked why. I had no real answer except that West is where you see the village that has grown into the Delhi that it is today.

The winds of change are sweeping across the dusty corridors of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). After ten years of DMK rule, a Congress Minister, Jairam Ramesh, is in charge.

Like the spider in the nursery rhyme 'Little Miss Muffet', M.A. Jinnah seems to have the unnerving habit of popping up at the side of various BJP leaders. Only unlike the little girl who fled at the sight of the arachnid, our BJP worthies seem to embrace the father of the Pakistani nation.

On one level, discussions about threats to India's internal security are depressingly familiar. Every chief ministers' meeting on the topic revolves around the same three threats: Pakistani-supported terrorists, Northeastern insurgents and Naxalites.

Call us naive, but when we look at the sepia-tinged photographs of the thousands swarming around the official buildings of New Delhi and other Indian cities on August 15, 1947, we sense a rush of envy. The first day in independent India is recorded as a spontaneous mass outpouring of joy and celebrations. Paradoxically, you don't get to see many flutters of paper tricolours as you do today.

A Chinese troublemaker who conceals his identity behind the nom de guerre of 'Strategy' has raised a storm with the modest proposal that China should break up India by supporting its million mutinies.

The Land Acquisition Bill, currently on hold with the Lok Sabha, has given rise to deep political fissures.

Whenever people tell me that India has changed after the liberalisation of the 1990s, that business is now independent of government and that India's industrialists now get on with the job quietly, I always say, "Well, up to a point."

Boy, am I glad we celebrated Independence Day yesterday. If the nation had somehow forgotten to raise the tricolour, sing Jana Gana Mana Oh What Funa! and do all those special things we do every August 15 - including sleep till midday to pay homage to those who fought or fasted for our freedom - who knows, it may have also slipped my slippery mind.

There's a book published tomorrow that deserves to be widely read. It's Jaswant Singh's biography of Jinnah. Read on and you'll discover why. Singh's view of Jinnah is markedly different to the accepted Indian image. He sees him as a nationalist, even accepting that Jinnah was a great Indian.

The results of the recently concluded Assembly bypolls in Punjab have demonstrated that the Shiromani Akali Dal faces no challenge from the Congress. The Akalis were able to comfortably win the Banur, Jalalabad and Kanuwan seats with the Congress not even in the fight. The Jalalabad victory ensured that Sukhbir Singh Badal is established as the No.

The only people who must be more upset than us about the latest Al-Jazeera-Gallup poll must be the Taliban. Shysters running the poll have come up with the upsetting news that while 59 per cent of Pakistanis felt that the US was their main threat, only 18 per cent feared India and a dismal 11 per cent said that the Taliban gave them the collywobbles.

India's free trade agreement with the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) is expected to bump up two-way merchandise exports by $10 billion in the first year of its coming into force.

Fifty years ago this week, one of the most discussed and admired films of Indian cinema, Guru Dutt's Kaagaz ke Phool, was released. I saw it at the New Empire in Bombay on the opening weekend. It was the first Indian film shot in cinemascope and it required special wide-screen projection in cinema halls, a rarity in those days.

Gordon G. Chang, Forbes.com
China and India wrapped up their 13th round of border talks on Saturday in New Delhi. The meeting produced agreements on various matters, such as the installation of a hot line between the Chinese and Indian capitals and plans to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic ties next year.