RESEARCH

How Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Co took the unassuming people of this country for a ride [ Click on the headline to hear Shambhu Dutt Sharma speak ] T he 5-8 April spectacle at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, was nothing but a corporate conspiracy of expending the energies of the Great Indian Huddle-and-Muddle Class, as mass mobilisation by Baba Ramdev and satyagraha by veteran Gandhian Shambhu Dutt Sharma was making them increasingly jittery. The unfolding of the events also suggests, at least in hindsight and going by the confessions of a drunk journalist, that the UPA Government was complicit in the act of trickery. When the pressure was building up : Baba Ramdev addressing a rally at Ramlila Maidan on 27 February 2011; the group went on to submit a memorandum containing 10 demands to the President To grab maximum eyeballs, the show was timed conveniently to fall between the end of the ICC World Cup tournament and the beginning of DLF-sponsored Indian Premier Leag...

Response to Purnima S Tripathi's article [ click on the headline for the Frontline feature ] F rom an editor's perspective, I see some loopholes in the writer's argument. First, it's a leftist viewpoint, which dictates that profit-making PSUs should not be divested. As per the point of view of an advocate of liberal market, however, government has no business being in the telecom trade; it must confine itself to social sectors. It further dictates that governments cannot sustain the vibrancy of a company in the long run, no matter how sound the fundamentals of the company are at the time of disinvestment. Second, when the writer says, "Industry experts... pointed out that the company was doing well... ," one wonders who these "experts" are, as none is quoted to that effect in the article. Prabir Purkayastha, whose views are explained in the next paragraph, appears to be the only person on whose views the article is based. And he cannot b...