-BiharDays.com If familiar with Indian politics and society, here is an IQ test for you. This is what Nandy said during a panel discussion as transcribed from a video clip doing the rounds in the media. Read it as carelessly as you wish and see if you can get the sarcasm. I bet you will, unless you are a towering intellectual or a star media analyst-panelist-commentator. Here it goes: ‘It is a fact...

-Outlook Talking ‘communal’ about FDI trivialises the secular cause If one adds up the number of MPs in the Lok Sabha belonging to political parties that have a stated position against FDI in retail trade, it will certainly be bigger than the number of MPs in favour of FDI. Actually, the figure goes well past the Lok Sabha majority mark of 272. Yet the resolution opposing FDI received only 218 votes...

-The Hindu The Leveson report on the British press should jolt the Indian media into acting against ills such as paid news, and focus on being an agent of progressive social change After an inquiry lasting a year, Lord Justice Leveson has delivered a damning verdict on the decades of “outrageous” behaviour by the media. If anything, this verdict would apply in even greater force to a large section (not all) of...

-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-PTI Yet another book has levelled an allegation that P V Narasimha Rao had connived at the demolition of Babri Masjid, claiming that the late Prime Minister had sat in a puja when the kar sevaks began pulling it down and rose only when it was over. The charge relating to the demolition on Dec 6, 1992 has been made by eminent journalist Kuldip Nayar in his soon-to-be released autobiography "Beyond the...