RESEARCH

Here's why Modi transferred, demoted, promoted and left untouched some of his ministers and MPs of BJP Continued from Part 1 Subramanian Swamy A transfer that would have been just short of a revolution was Arun Jaitley’s from the Finance Ministry. Accept it, no BJP supporter likes him. While the Subramanian Swamy camp makes no bones about their disapproval of Jaitley, supporters who are more loyal to Modi stay silent on his performance, camouflaging their disaffection for Jaitley with invectives showered upon Swamy like “he is a maverick”; “he was once with Jayalalithaa and then he went after her”; “he wrote an article against the RSS once upon a time”; “he was behind the Vajpayee government’s fall in 1999”, etc [Click on this link for Swamy’s rebuttals ]. Modi knows better than any of us what Swamy is. If it is not the 75 years age limit that went against Swamy, it is also a good idea to keep a rabble rouser out of ministries. This is not to say Swamy has no utilit...

Speculations are rife whenever journalists try to read the Prime Minister’s mind. In the last three days, as always, Modi drove them to their wit’s end just as he had the day before inducting his first council of ministers two years ago P rime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have some fun, virtually challenging the media to read his mind for 48 hours. On 4 July, even as journalists had been speculating on the shape of the then impending Cabinet reshuffle, he told the Press that it would be an expansion drive, not a reshuffle. Hiding its disappointment, television channels ran tickers on the screen, relaying the announcement, and newspapers the next morning reported that the Cabinet would merely see some new appointments while no NDA MP was gaining or losing a job. With the swearing-in ceremony for the new appointees on 5 July, Modi appeared to keep his word initially. But as is a political commentator’s wont, tongues would wag with whatever information available. So, until the s...

M ost of the time, it is subtle. The teacher would make snide remarks about you as you pass through a corridor and, sometimes, even while a lecture session is on — if you do not happen to share the teacher’s political ideology. It is not necessary that you are affiliated to the ABVP or the teacher owes his/her allegiance to the CPM, CPI or CPI(ML)-Revolution. The professor might have been a communist when s/he was a student in JNU years ago, or the constant company of communist colleagues has had an influence on his/her mindset. Saying so, however, would sound no better than a right winger’s pet theory. So, let’s study some specific cases. The identities of the students will stay hidden — lest their careers should be affected. The names of the teachers must be told, however; or else this story will not be credible. Moushumi Basu is an Associate Professor and CIPOD’s coordinator with the Equal Opportunity Office (EOO) of JNU. Several students have heard her boa...

His strategy of playing the underdog and targeting high-profile rivals was sticking with the people until he turned out to be a serial liar T his man has gone mad. While “mad” is not a standard term in the lexicon of political commentators, I couldn’t find a more apt description for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal based on his behaviour over the past month or two. First, the rabble-rouser who cleverly avoided even mild criticism of Narendra Modi at the formative stage of the Aam Aadmi Party, fearing it would alienate the masses, called the Prime Minister a “coward” and “psychopath”. Thereafter, the self-styled crusader against corruption trained his guns at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, following a CBI raid on the office of Rajendra Kumar, the Chief Minister’s principal secretary facing a hell lot of charges of corruption . Recall that a previous attack on Jaitley, where the AAP had accused him of horse trading , did not stick. Then, Kejriwal does not have the humility to ...

If this does not happen, there would still be no UPA government! Read on to know why and how. T he headline tells the entire story. But the Bharatiya Janata Party had reasons to be concerned from the first two rounds of Bihar Assembly elections, while it is upbeat about the third, which it is expecting to sweep, when I landed in Patna and went all over the place in the state. The third and fourth rounds are going to be good for the BJP, as it is the weakest stretch for the so-called Mahagathbandhan , while the outcome of the last round is believed to be determined by Muslims. Our readers know what that means. This was the state of affairs when I landed in Bihar for the second time after assessing the electoral situation two months ago for Swarajya . And this is my introduction to the piece because all parties in the fray agree to this theory off the record, and so do local journalists who have a much better idea of what is happening on their turf than the staffers of ...