-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-The Economic Times The India of today would, perhaps, be among the most emotion-driven societies in the world. There would have been nothing wrong per se in this if emotions determined how an individual were to live his or her life, and influenced personal decisions. The big danger is when emotions become the Rosetta Stone to interpret the current and emerging needs of the nation, putting aside facts, objectivity, scientific temperament...

-Bloomberg It wasn't the Gettsyburg Address -- unless it's poker faces we're comparing. Future historians aren't going to be parsing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's speech for hidden meanings, and rhetoricians won't be delighting in the majesty of its style and the compression of its effects. It inflamed no passions, as did Mitt Romney's words about the "47 percent," and asserted no big idea or thesis, unless there was one contained in the...

-The Friday Times How are demographics changing in Assam and Bengal? And what does this mean for 'indigenous' communities? Garga Chatterjee considers the argument for territorial purity The Assam state of the Indian Union has seen violence flare up suddenly from July 6th. With more than 40 people reported dead and upwards of one and a half lakh displaced in a week, the Kokrajhar riots between Bodos and Muslims have again brought...

-Live Mint Maruti Suzuki India Ltd’s Manesar plant was witness to prolonged labour strife last year, but the violence unleashed on Wednesday that led to one person being killed caught its victims completely unawares. “Some of us jumped off the first floor to save our lives as we saw a mob of workers, hundreds of them, rushing towards us,” one of the injured Maruti officials told reporters at a hospital in Gurgaon...