The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get. Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might...

Opening the reply to the President's Motion of Thanks on behalf of the Left parties in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury, demanded the stopping of the “loot” of public money in the form of concessions to corporates and high-end taxpayers. This relief, worth several lakhs of rupees, should be used to narrow the rich-poor divide, he added. Calling upon the government to shift policy...

Media-corporate links are structural. But journalists, certainly entrenched ones, can choose whether they wish to be stenographers or not. It was gratifying to have the head of India's most reputed business house confirm the existence of crony capitalism in the country. True, others have believed this for 20 years but it carries more weight when Ratan Tata says so. As he put it in a television interview with admirable candour: “Yes,...

Almost one-third of Indians are "utterly corrupt" and half are "borderline", the outgoing head of the country's corruption watchdog has said, blaming increased wealth for much of the problem. Pratyush Sinha, who retired as India's Central Vigilance Commissioner this week, said the worst part of his "thankless job" was observing how corruption had increased as people became more materialistic. "When we were growing up I remember if somebody was corrupt,...

Mani Shankar Aiyar has probably not read Dale Carnegie's best-seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People. A few years ago, in a St Stephens alumni register, former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh wrote, "I am what I am because of  the college". Prompt came Aiyar's rejoinder: "Why blame the college!" Politics though is not a college campus. The ready wit and pungent sarcasm which might earn applause in a debating...