a) Modi is a true Pan-Indian leader: the general elections propelled Modi from Gujarat chief minister into India’s neta number one; the state elections have reinforced his stature as a pan-Indian leader.
Political judgements based on opinion polls are hazardous at the best of times, but when there is a five-cornered fight like in Maharashtra, pollsters are often whistling in the dark. There were almost 50 constituencies in Maharashtra in 2009 where the margin was less than 5,000 votes, making any conclusive poll prediction a nightmare. And yet, let me stick my neck out on my home state: The BJP will be almost certainly the single-largest party and, in fact, should get a clear majority.
The tyranny of television rating points has meant that exit polls are now part of the great Indian election tamasha. Let me make an honest confession: I am a firm believer in the CSDS method of post polls, which are done at least a day after the votes have been caste and where the pollsters actually go to people’s homes to get a more exhaustive survey done.
It takes a book festival in Kasauli to get away from the noise of news. A weekend in the bracing hills of Himachal to attend the Khushwant Singh literary festival was just what the doctor ordered.
In February this year, I met MV Kamath for the last time. Kamath, a veteran journalist, was dean of the Manipal Institute of Communication and had invited me to talk on the political situation in the country. We had to walk two floors: Kamath was 93, ailing, but insisted on taking the stairs. ‘I need to get fit,’
Cinema often holds a mirror to society. Remember those macho ‘war’ films of the 1990s: the Gaddars and the Borders that glorified the army and projected Pakistan as the permanent …
Of all the ideas that Narendra Modi has thrown up since becoming prime minister, the Swacha Bharat Abhiyan launched on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday is easily his most imaginative and dare one say, ambitious. Imaginative in the manner in which it has tapped into a concern which has been astonishingly ignored for much too long; ambitious because to ‘clean’ a country of the size of India will require a super-human effort.
So Narendra Modi has finally landed in America to much hype and excitement more than a decade after his last visit. And my mind rewinds to the year 2000 when I was covering another Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to the US. Vajpayee didn’t have a schedule quite as packed as Mr Modi, nor was he as voluble
Every time I take a long international flight, my admiration for seafarers increases. Think of the long months and years that the Columbus and Vasco D Gamas spent discovering new lands and frontiers. By contrast, I have still made it to New York in less than a day and am still fretting over a jet lag.
