-The Deccan Chronicle Army units are currently undergoing jungle warfare training in naxal-affected Chhattisgarh, even as the Union government’s policy of not deploying the Army for anti-naxal operations anywhere in the country still remains in place. The jungle warfare training is currently on at the Narainpur Manoeuvre Range in South Chhattisgarh. In recent years, the Army has been boosting its presence in Chhattisgarh through plans — approved earlier by the Union...

The arrest of Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi in connection with the bomb attack on an Israeli embassy car raises many questions. AN uneasy silence fills the streets of B.K. Dutt Colony near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Named after the revolutionary freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, who, along with Bhagat Singh, threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929, the nondescript colony has been...

A court judgment delivered earlier this year holds important lessons for those engaged in investigating and fighting terrorism. Questioning the methods of terror investigation is always a challenge because it is so easily seen as defending the enemies of the nation. The exercise is monumentally difficult after a benumbing bomb attack — especially if it has been judged to be the work of a home-grown Islamist organisation. The raging anger at this...

Dr. Subba Reddy, my classmate at the medical college, practises in a village in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. A decade ago, a patient came to him for treatment of hydrocele. After examination, Dr. Reddy suggested surgery costing Rs. 500. The patient asked Dr. Reddy to refer him to a bigger hospital in a city. Dr. Reddy suggested a city hospital. After a few days, he received Rs.1,000 from the...

Let Aruna die? No, with her alive, there’s more power, media attention. Hence, the politics of mercy in medicine. Lucknow airport. Late ’90s. Khushwant Singh and I are waiting for our flights, we talk about Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee mentioning my book Once Was Bombay in a speech on collapsing cities. He suddenly asks, “You wrote that book on the woman who neither lives nor dies, you still see her?” I...