RESEARCH

Liberal economic thinker Surjit S Bhalla speaks to me after being cut short during a televised debate T here is a concerted effort on the part of the Congress to project the current NDA government as UPA-3, and the media is playing by its script — well known commentator on economic affairs Surjit S Bhalla believes. His appearance on NDTV on 25 June made him stand out as a panellist who was speaking on technical grounds. Since he was not lent a patient ear, I thought of getting his opinion fully on l’affaire Lalit Modi. This is beyond what is written in his article in The Indian Express that says what Swarajya had said some time ago: Legally, the former IPL commissioner is not a fugitive. There are so many citizens, including otherwise innocent ones, who have been served notices by the Enforcement Directorate (ED); that does not make them criminals or fugitives, Bhalla says. Economist Surjit S Bhalla I began by asking Bhalla why he did not protest on be

On the Emergency Day, I present an untold story of India’s pacifist, media-shy right wing organisation in the backdrop of Indira Gandhi’s despotism I have been sympathetic to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh because it is a nationalist organisation. I am not a supporter; there are aspects of its belief system — chiefly science and economics — that I disagree with. This is the first time I am dedicating an article to its wisdom and heroism. For, this is what I learnt over the past few days; it is true, but nobody has told this story before. Even the most extensive of reports on the political developments of the 1970s in WWW has the RSS’s role no more than a paragraph or a footnote. Since the early 1970s, as Indira Gandhi’s popularity waned swiftly after the resounding success in carving a Bangladesh out of Pakistan, a plan to fight for democracy was brewing in the ranks of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS. Unlike the popular belief, Co