RESEARCH

... even as India votes for advertised 'truth' _______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ R ight wing economists must welcome a UPA Government minus the left. Let’s hope the Congress does not betray its ally, the Trinamool Congress, to shake hands with the socialists who still have some more seats with them than their rival if both Kerala and West Bengal are counted, despite the rout the communists have faced in both the states. Let us hope that 2009-10 sparkles as brilliantly in contrast to 2008-09 as 1991-92 had sparkled in contrast to 1990-91. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's first job in hand is economic reforms, held hostage by communists for five long years. Let us also rejoice the defeat of a bundle of confusions, aka the BJP, which failed miserably to read the pulse of the nation as, egged on by an obscurantist behemoth called the RSS, it clung on to a non-performing asset — a promised Ram temple in Ayodhya — in these gloomy times of economic slowdown and unemp...

UDF is likely to sweep the Lok Sabha elections in Kerala, thanks to a negative vote for the CPI(M)-led dispensation's governance in the state ______________________________ Arun Lakshman | Thiruvananthapuram ______________________________ T he opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) led by the Congress is expected to make major headways in the Indian state of Kerala in the general elections with the front to take at least 13 seats out of the total of 20 with the ruling LDF led by the CPI(M) to contend with 7 seats or even less. While the BJP, the BSP and the NCP will give stiff fights to both the camps in some seats, eventually the seats would be shared between the two major fronts. The Congress camp is bubbling with enthusiasm with all the senior leaders of the party from the union defence minister AK Antony to the state PCC president Ramesh Chennithala sharing with the press their expectation as high as that of 18 seats. However, a trip through Kerala by this correspondent sugg...

... as Prachanda-led Maoists see the country's president have a truck with India ____________ Nithin Sridhar ____________ N epal is again in news. After gaining prominence in 2005 and finally becoming Prime Minister in 2008, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Comrade Prachanda, Chairman, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), finally stepped down on 4 April 2009 after a spat with the country's President Ram Baran Yadav over the issue of the sacking of Army Chief Gen Rukmangad Katawal. The drama started to unfold at 9:30 am on 3 May when a high-level meeting of five coalition partners was held at the prime minister's residence. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (CPN-UML), the second largest party in the coalition, and Sadbhavana walked out of the meeting. At 10:15 am, Lt General Kul Bahadur Khadka met with the prime minister. Later at 11 am, Gen Katawal met with the Prime Minister. At 12 pm, the cabinet sacked Katawal. Later at 10:30 PM, President Yadav se...

The report carrying her clarification on Rahul Gandhi's MPhil raises more questions than answers Dear Prof Alison Richard, I am a Delhi-based journalist investigating the academic credentials of Rahul Gandhi, the Indian National Congress candidate contesting from the constituency of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, for the Lok Sabha elections 2009. I would like to get a detailed confirmation of your interview with Press Trust of India, the report of which was carried by The Times of India , IBN and Zee News . Recently, they (a newspaper and two television news channels respectively) carried an identical story (the web pages of IBN and Zee News do not give PTI the credit) in their respective websites, saying you, in the capacity of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, have confirmed that Rahul Gandhi (son of former/late Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi) received the postgraduate degree of MPhil on Development Studies from your esteemed university. The three web pages are...

How would you react if this man were your colleague? _______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ I n 1994, this writer came across a young girl who was then serving a direct sales associate of a multinational bank as a telemarketing executive. She must not have met the right people at the right time till then. For, with a PGDBM from IMT-Ghaziabad and a degree in commerce from SRCC, she deserved better. Within six months of our first meeting, however, I was glad to know she had become the supervisor of the NBFC which was also the American bank's DSA. But her colleagues were not impressed. They said she was having an affair with the marketing manager of the company. A few months later during a chat with that manager, I noticed he was visibly crest-fallen. The reason turned out to be the break up of his relationship with the girl in question. I learnt she was then seeing the area sales manager of a competing bank. Mutual acquaintances said the two were about to get married...