Podcasts about vajpayee

CutTheClutter: 30 yrs since Vajpayee 1.0: His Raj Dharma legacy, formidable as Nehru's liberalism, Rao's pragmatism

In this episode I share with you key insights from Vajpayee's life and Indian history to help you become mentally strong. I hope you enjoy the episode.

The INDIA bloc's unity is not based on a common ideology but the shared goal of opposing the BJP. This has historically been the formula for alliances, with temporary unity emerging to counter dominant parties, but these coalitions have often been short-lived. As Congress seeks to assert itself in this context, the bloc's survival depends on whether it can remain cohesive through 2029. In Episode 1605 of #CutTheClutter, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta & Political Editor DK Singh discuss the future of a fraught INDIA bloc in the aftermath of the Delhi elections. Read 3 blunders by Indira, Rajiv, Vajpayee, Advani that changed Indian politics & here's the worst here: https://theprint.in/national-interest/3-blunders-by-indira-rajiv-vajpayee-advani-that-changed-indian-politics-heres-the-worst/1961181/

This week on Cyrus Says, we have Mani Shankar Aiyar who’s known for his razor-sharp wit and unapologetic honesty, Aiyar offers a rare glimpse into the corridors of power, recounting his journey as a three-term Member of Parliament, India’s first Minister of Panchayati Raj, a UPA cabinet minister, and a Rajya Sabha member. True to form, Aiyar spares no one, not even himself. The panel delves into his candid recollections of political titans like Sonia Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh, while also discussing his take on key issues like the BJP’s rise in Indian politics, the Kaveri Water Crisis, and the Harshad Mehta Scam. Through these anecdotes we discover realities of Indian politics and the personal cost of being a non-conformist in a system dominated by conformity. Don’t miss this engaging discussion that brings humor, wit, and sharp insights into the life and times of one of India’s most intriguing political figures.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the Catchup on 3 Things by The Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.Today is the 26th of December and here are the headlines.A roadside biryani vendor, Gnanasekaran, was arrested in Chennai for allegedly sexually assaulting a student at Anna University's campus on Monday night. The arrest led to a political uproar, with BJP and AIADMK accusing Tamil Nadu's ruling DMK of ties to the accused. However, the DMK denies any association. The attack reportedly occurred around 8 pm when the student was in a secluded area of the 180-acre campus, chatting with a friend. Authorities are investigating the case while the political parties continue their accusations.At a Patna event commemorating the life of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a protest erupted when folk singer Devi performed the line "Ishwar Allah tero naam" from the bhajan "Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram." Protesters interrupted the performance, claiming it was inappropriate. BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain condemned the disruption, calling it "the height of intolerance." The song, which has been closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, was being sung as part of a tribute to Vajpayee, leading to tensions during the event.Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal expressed frustration with Congress over complaints filed against AAP leading up to Delhi's 2025 elections. Kejriwal criticized Congress for alleging AAP was anti-national despite seeking its help during campaigning. Delhi CM Atishi questioned why Congress formed an alliance with AAP if they had such doubts. She accused Congress leaders in Delhi of aiding BJP in the upcoming polls and possibly making secret pacts to harm AAP's electoral prospects.Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy met with major figures from the Telugu film industry on Thursday, rejecting their demand for increased movie ticket prices. Reddy stressed the importance of respecting the law and not offering any more concessions for film screenings. He also urged industry leaders to support government campaigns against drugs, promote women's safety, and help with ecotourism and temple tourism initiatives. The meeting followed concerns over a stampede during the premiere of "Pushpa 2," which tragically killed a woman.In Gaza, five Palestinian journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, according to local authorities. However, the Israeli military stated that the airstrike targeted a vehicle carrying Islamic Jihad militants. The journalists were reportedly in a broadcast vehicle outside Al-Awda Hospital in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp when the attack occurred. The Palestinian Journalists Union confirmed their deaths, which were part of a series of airstrikes that also killed at least 16 others. This violence comes as ceasefire talks remain stalled after months of fighting.This was the Catch Up on 3 Things by The Indian Express.

Loyalty, not merit, as promotion criterion, insecurities, wrong judgement? There are questions galore about why Modi-Shah failed to develop mass leaders for BJP in states as Vajpayee-Advani did, ThePrint Political Editor DK Singh explains in this episode of Politically Correct.----more----Read 2019 Politically Correct here: https://theprint.in/opinion/unlike-vajpayee-advani-gen-next-bjp-leaders-groomed-by-modi-shah-dont-look-promising/203794/----more----Read this week's Politically Correct here: https://theprint.in/opinion/politically-correct/why-modi-shah-have-failed-to-develop-mass-leaders-in-states-the-way-vajpayee-advani-did/2300529/

முதல்வரை வடிவேலுவோடு ஒப்பிடுவதா... விமர்சனத்துக்கு ஐ.பி.எஸ் குழுவின் பதில்! Netflix: IC 814 Web Series-ஐ மத்திய அரசு எதிர்ப்பது ஏன்? வங்கதேசத்திலிருந்து வெளியேறிய அகதிகள் தமிழ்நாட்டில் தஞ்சமடையத் திட்டமா? இந்த ஆட்சியில் மோடி அரசு அடித்த யு டர்ன்கள் எத்தனை?

In 1975, the Allahabad High Court finds Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractices during the 1971 election and rules that she needs to step down as Prime Minister. This triggers a series of events that culminate in the imposition of Emergency in India - a period when all civil liberties of common citizens, are taken away by the government.

Vikram Jit Singh is a distinguished journalist and columnist. With a career spanning several decades, he has gained recognition for his in-depth reporting and analysis on defense and security issues. Singh served as a war correspondent, notably covering the Kargil War and counter-terrorism operations in Kashmir from 1997 to 1999 and again in 2004. His frontline experiences during these conflicts have provided him with unique insights into military operations and the challenges faced by the Indian armed forces. In addition to his written work, Singh is a TV analyst specializing in defense, where he offers expert commentary and analysis on current military and security affairs. 00:00 Musharraf crossed LoC in March 1999 02:06 Kargil War started on 6th May? 5:05 Pak started Kargil intrusion in 1998 10:22 Army top brass ignored intrusion signs 14:53 Kargil was not intelligence failure 17:26 Army keeps repeating THIS MISTAKE 23:57 Vikram Jit climbs Tololing with soldiers 26:58 When Vikram Jit faced Pak shelling 30:30 When Indian soldiers buried Pak soldiers 31:32 Vikram Jit's Near death experience 33:20 Experience of Bofors in action at night 36:17 Bravest of Brave - Naik Digendra Kumar 39:32 Indians don't even know about these Kargil Veers 41:39 Integrity of Rifleman Kripal Singh 43:35 Veer Wife of Lance Naik Durg Narayan Shreshth 47:32 Incompetent Generals got soldiers killed 50:36 Generals misled Vajpayee government also 52:16 Generals got medals instead of punishment 55:29 Not crossing LoC was a BIG MISTAKE 58:15 What India lost by not crossing LoC 1:01:38 Unsung heroes of Kargil War 1:07:29 It was HELL for Indian soldiers 1:13:01 There were COWARD soldiers also 1:15:11 Story of A Pak soldier Rommel Akram 1:18:47 GREAT ROLE of Infantry Forward Officers 1:21:30 How Vikram Jit used to report from Kargil

Join us in celebrating Diwali with the timeless words of former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This beautiful poem, "आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ," captures the essence of Diwali, the festival of lights. Vajpayee's verses inspire us to rekindle the lamp, understand our goals, and overcome obstacles to achieve victory. Experience the magic of Diwali with this soul-stirring poem.

Rohith Vemula's family calls Telangana Police's closure report 'full of lies'; plans to challenge it, Didn't Advani, Vajpayee...': Mallikarjun Kharge reacts to PM Modi's 'Rae Bareli' jibe at Rahul Gandhi, Obscene video case: HD Revanna faces kidnap charge as woman goes missing, 'I won't leave battlefield, will keep fighting': Hardik introspects after MI's campaign hangs on mathematical fate, Heeramandi: Netizens point out these historical inaccuracies in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's series

How much has the BJP veered away from the Vajpayee style of governing? Could you really have called Vajpayee a moderate and LK Advani, a hardliner? And what can be learned from the sense of unity in the BJP? In this episode, Sandip talks to political scientist Dr Vinay Sitapati about his latest book, Jugalbandi: The BJP before Modi, in which he deals with these questions, and writes about the movement which led to Vajpayee and Advani coming to power.Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar.

En Inde, des élections législatives importantes, vues comme un scrutin XXL, vont se dérouler du 19 avril au 4 juin. Près d'un milliard d'Indiens sont invités à glisser dans les urnes leurs bulletins indiquant leurs choix. Le Premier ministre sortant Narendra Modi et sa formation, le Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), au pouvoir depuis 10 ans, sont les principaux favoris. Qui est Narendra Modi ? Fossoyeur de la démocratie indienne, comme le disent ses détracteurs, ou grand modernisateur, si l'on croit ses partisans ? Réponses dans Dans la tête de Narendra Modi, ouvrage entre biographie et analyse que consacrent au Premier ministre indien deux journalistes du Monde.En quelque 270 pages, le livre brosse le portrait de ce véritable animal politique qu'on connaît mal en Occident. Mêlant récit et analyse, les auteurs racontent son parcours personnel, dressent le bilan de son action politique et s'attachent à pointer du doigt, derrière ses bravades sur l'Inde superpuissance en devenir, le vrai dessein idéologique de Modi visant à asseoir la suprématie des hindous et à perpétuer la domination des hautes castes dans la société indienne. Rencontre avec le co-auteur Guillaume Delacroix.RFI : Une étude psychologique ? Une biographie ? Comment peut-on qualifier votre livre, Guillaume Delacroix ?Guillaume Delacroix : C'est un livre d'enquête journalistique. Nous sommes deux à l'avoir écrit : Sophie Landrin, correspondante du Monde à Delhi, et moi-même, qui ai passé huit ans en Inde, à Bombay, pour Le Monde également. Ce dont on s'était rendu compte, c'est que le personnage de Modi est porteur d'une idéologie très ancienne, qui a bientôt 100 ans. Ce qui est en train de se passer en Inde vient de très très loin. Pour nous, c'est un tournant dans le régime politique et dans la vie démocratique de ce grand pays.Ça vient d'une structuration de la pensée nationaliste hindoue qui remonte à 1925. Et il nous semblait intéressant de justement remonter aux racines de cette idéologie pour comprendre pourquoi Modi est arrivé au pouvoir et « pour quoi ? », en deux mots, c'est-à-dire : Quel est le dessein ? Quel objectif poursuit-il ? On a proposé nos services à Actes Sud, qui avait justement une série correspondant exactement à cette approche, qui s'appelait Dans la tête de…. Actes Sud avait déjà publié un certain nombre de Dans la tête de… consacrés aux dirigeants politiques mondiaux et il manquait Narendra Modi sur l'étagère. Dans les librairies en Europe, il y a extrêmement peu de livres sur l'Inde et encore moins sur Narendra Modi, presque rien. Donc, notre livre est venu combler en quelque sorte un vide.Votre essai s'ouvre sur l'anecdote de la pose de la première pierre du temple d'Ayodhya. Qu'est-ce qu'elle symbolise, cette anecdote ?Ce temple d'Ayodhya, en fait, tout passe par lui. C'est un instrument politique. Ce temple a été construit sur les ruines d'une mosquée, elle-même démolie par des fanatiques en 1992 sous la baguette de Narendra Modi qui était, à l'époque, un jeune cacique de son parti. Il avait organisé avec le président du parti de l'époque cette démolition. C'est l'achèvement du rêve dominateur de l'hindouisme. C'était l'une des trois priorités que s'était fixées la mouvance nationaliste hindoue il y a un siècle, il y a même plus d'un siècle, à savoir : asseoir la suprématie de la majorité hindoue sur le reste de la population, les musulmans et les chrétiens.On connaît mal en Occident Narendra Modi. Qui est-il ? D'où vient-il ? Comment est-il devenu Premier ministre de l'Inde ? Il tranche vraiment avec ses prédécesseurs parce que son parcours personnel est atypique. Il n'est pas lettré, il n'est pas éduqué, il n'a pas fait d'études comme beaucoup de Premiers ministres indiens avant lui. On pense tous à Nehru ou à Indira Gandhi, mais pas seulement. Son dernier prédécesseur, du parti du Congrès, Manmohan Singh, était un grand économiste. Vajpayee qui, lui, était du parti de Modi et qui a occupé le poste de Premier ministre il y a une vingtaine d'années, était un brahmane lettré. On pense que Narendra Modi n'a même pas le bac… Enfin, il y a un flou artistique qui entoure tout cela. Une légende s'est construite autour de l'homme, le self-made man, l'autodidacte…Ce qui est certain, c'est que Narendra Modi est un apparatchik. Il a été formé dès son plus jeune âge, dès l'âge de huit ans, dans la nébuleuse nationaliste hindoue, incarnée par une organisation paramilitaire, l'Association des volontaires de la nation (le RSS). Il a gravi les échelons progressivement au sein de cette organisation et a été porté au pouvoir sans être candidat à des élections. En 2001, ses supérieurs l'ont nommé à la tête de l'État du Gujarat, dont il est originaire, qui se trouve être aussi l'État natal du Mahatma Gandhi. C'est seulement en 2002 qu'il a été élu par un électorat majoritairement hindou. Il est populaire au Gujarat, sans doute parce qu'il avait « laissé faire » – c'est l'expression usitée en Inde – des pogroms anti-musulmans qui ont marqué l'histoire de l'Inde contemporaine. Les pogroms ont lancé en quelque sorte la carrière politique de Narendra Modi !Vous racontez dans votre livre – et c'est passionnant – comment, malgré sa contribution à la cause du nationalisme hindou, il n'a pas été le premier choix des hiérarques de son organisation lorsqu'il a fallu choisir une tête de liste « premier ministrable » avant les élections législatives de 2014…Narendra Modi dérangeait en fait au sein de sa propre famille politique parce qu'il était atypique, et surtout parce qu'il ne venait pas des hautes castes. L'Inde est connue pour son système de castes très rigide, qui divise la société en quelque 25 000 castes. Le mouvement hindouiste est dirigé par des hommes de haute caste et pour ces dirigeants, Modi, qui est issu d'une classe sociale modeste, ne pouvait pas être leur candidat à la primature. Finalement, parce que Modi est un homme talentueux, charismatique, qui sait manier la carotte et le bâton, il a réussi à emporter le choix des autorités du RSS comme candidat de son parti pour le poste de Premier ministre. C'était finalement un bon choix puisqu'il a gagné l'élection.Il s'est aussi révélé être un bon soldat, qui porte avec conviction et fidélité le message de son mouvement, l'hindutva. Or, qu'est-ce que l'hindutva ?Tout cela vient de loin. Narendra Modi est l'aboutissement du cheminement lent, progressif de l'idée du suprémacisme hindou, qui débouche aujourd'hui sur une polarisation extrême. L'hindutva, c'est l'idée que la majorité a des droits supérieurs aux minorités, et c'est pour cela qu'on adopte des lois stigmatisantes et qu'on établit une forme d'apartheid rampant. C'est un peu ce qui est en train de se passer aujourd'hui. On assiste à une institutionnalisation de la ségrégation entre les hindous d'une part, et d'autre part, ceux qui appartiennent à des religions différentes, celles des « envahisseurs » en fait. Modi parle beaucoup d'esclavage, c'est-à-dire en gros 1 000 ans d'occupation musulmane, puis 200 ans d'occupation britannique. Cela se traduit aujourd'hui par des mosquées que l'on détruit, comme cela s'est passé à Ayodhya avec la destruction de la mosquée Babri en 1992.L'hindutva, c'est ça, c'est dominer et faire croire à une masse solidaire d'hindous que leur religion est supérieure aux autres religions. C'est bien sûr une fiction, mais pendant ce temps-là, alors qu'on unifie les hindous contre les musulmans et les chrétiens, on ne parle pas des fractures qui divisent la société indienne, où le pouvoir est entre les mains de la plus haute caste, les brahmanes. Obnubilée par la question musulmane, la population hindoue vit dans l'ignorance de cette situation.Si je vous comprends bien, Guillaume Delacroix, le véritable objectif de Narendra Modi n'est pas la marginalisation des minorités, mais la perpétuation de la hiérarchie des castes. C'est ça, le dessein caché ?C'est vraiment le cœur de notre livre avec Sophie Landrin. L'objectif de ce gouvernement n'est pas tant l'hindouisme que le castéisme, c'est-à-dire la domination de la société indienne avec le maintien du pouvoir entre les mains d'une oligarchie de hautes castes. Alors après, on peut gloser sur la définition de ce qu'est l'Inde aujourd'hui. On l'appelle encore « la plus grande démocratie du monde ». Nous, on pense que ce n'est plus le cas. Elle a peut-être encore quelques traits de démocratie parce qu'il y a des élections, et même des alternances, sur le plan de la gouvernance régionale. Mais force est de constater que l'État de droit en Inde est battu en brèche tous les jours. Le pouvoir aujourd'hui est maintenant entre les mains d'une oligarchie, avec un mélange de genres absolument inédit entre le politique et le religieux.Narendra Modi se pose en grand prêtre, en gourou, quand il préside à des cérémonies, comme il l'a fait à Ayodhya où il a présidé, fin janvier, l'inauguration du temple bâti sur les ruines de la mosquée abattue. Ce mélange du politique et religieux est totalement en décalage avec le rôle imputé au Premier ministre de l'Inde dans la Constitution, qui est égalitaire et séculariste. Selon la Constitution de 1950 toujours en vigueur, l'Inde doit accueillir toutes les religions et ne doit en privilégier aucune.C'est en fait le contraire qui se passe depuis dix ans, en toute impunité, en attendant le changement de la Constitution...C'est un peu, si vous voulez, le souhait des nationalistes hindous et des plus radicaux de cette frange politique. Elle veut prendre sa revanche sur la partition de 1947, lorsque l'Inde est devenue indépendante. Le pays a été divisé en deux, avec d'un côté le Pakistan qui s'est défini comme une république islamique, et de l'autre, l'Inde qui a souhaité, sous la férule de Gandhi et de Nehru, demeurer laïque. Aujourd'hui, la droite hindouiste veut revenir là-dessus et réclame que, puisque les musulmans ont eu leur État avec le Pakistan, l'Inde doit être un État hindou. Nous expliquons dans notre livre que ce débat va au-delà du religieux pour rappeler que, pour une frange de la droite hindouiste, l'hindouisme est dans l'ADN, dans le sang des gens.L'hindouisation du pays semble être allée de pair avec une véritable dérive autoritaire. Dressant le bilan des dix années de Narendra Modi à la tête du pays, vous évoquez dans votre livre un « gouvernement par la peur » qui touche les minorités, mais aussi les médias, les intellectuels, les universitaires, les étudiants. On assiste à un sérieux rétrécissement des libertés. Comment est-on passé de la démocratie bureaucratique et chaotique de l'Inde d'antan à cet État quasi orwellien ?Il ne faut pas penser que tout s'est fait en un jour et que, lorsque Narendra Modi a pris les rênes de l'Inde en mai 2014, tout a basculé. Tout cela était en germe en fait dans l'histoire politique de l'Inde. C'est simplement qu'avec le BJP au pouvoir, tout a été démultiplié. Le braconnage des élus, par exemple, existait avant, mais le phénomène a été démultiplié par 100, peut-être par 1 000. L'Inde a toujours été un pays inégalitaire. La peur du plus fort, du plus puissant touche aujourd'hui la gouvernance, même les gens à la tête du pays. Les témoignages que nous avons recueillis auprès des personnes participant aux réunions décisionnaires dans le bureau du Premier ministre nous ont laissés entendre que tout le monde a le doigt sur la couture du pantalon, si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, parce qu'ils ont tous peur. D'ailleurs, c'est dans le bureau du Premier ministre que toutes les décisions sont prises, car il y a aujourd'hui une concentration absolument inédite du pouvoir entre les mains d'un seul homme. Les ministres sont tous des fantoches et ils ont tous peur de parler, de déplaire au chef. Et cette peur se dissémine, se répand à travers le pays.À lire aussiInde: le BJP de Narendra Modi en campagne pour conserver New Delhi aux élections généralesLes gens ont peur parce que le Parlement a voté de nouvelles lois liberticides qui réduisent la liberté d'expression des citoyens. Le gouvernement a autorisé les agences au sein des services secrets, tout comme le fisc, à poursuivre systématiquement les opposants politiques et la société civile. On a fait fermer 20 000 ONG sous prétexte qu'elles touchaient des financements venant de l'étranger ou bien d'être des agents de l'étranger, et donc de promouvoir la sédition et la désagrégation de l'Inde. On a politisé la justice et on a fait peur aux juges en les nommant dans des bleds éloignés s'ils passent des jugements considérés comme étant critiques du gouvernement. Encore tout récemment, deux étudiants ont été suspendus d'une grande université parce qu'ils avaient osé lancer un débat sur le temple d'Ayodhya dans l'amphithéâtre. Les Indiens vivent aujourd'hui dans un régime de peur généralisée, dans lequel les victimes sont transformées en coupables et les coupables en innocents.  La presse aussi a fait les frais de ce raidissement du pouvoir qui n'a pas épargné la presse internationale, comme en témoigne l'affaire de la journaliste française Vanessa Dougnac, obligée de quitter l'Inde en février dernier, après avoir été en poste dans ce pays depuis 20 ans. Diriez-vous que cette affaire est révélatrice d'un changement de régime en Inde ?Pour les journalistes exerçant leur métier en Inde, cette affaire a été un électrochoc. C'est la première fois qu'un correspondant étranger est chassé de ce pays. Vanessa Dougnac était correspondante de l'hebdomadaire Le Point, puis du quotidien La Croix. Elle vivait depuis 23 ans en Inde et s'était mariée avec un Indien, avec qui elle a eu un enfant. Les autorités indiennes lui ont reproché d'avoir écrit des reportages « malveillants » et « biaisés » sur l'Inde, alors qu'elle était considérée par ses confrères comme l'une des meilleures spécialistes du pays dans la presse française. Cette affaire est préoccupante, car elle révèle en effet le rétrécissement de la liberté de la presse en Inde.Éclatant dans la foulée d'autres affaires de censure visant la presse indienne et la presse étrangère, cette affaire a valu à l'Inde d'avoir perdu 21 places dans le classement mondial sur la liberté de la presse, où elle se situe, derrière l'Afghanistan, au 161e rang de l'index qui compte 180 pays. Pour ma co-autrice Sophie Landrin et moi, l'affaire de la journaliste française chassée d'Inde était le signe que ce pays est en train de quitter le camp des démocraties pour basculer dans celui des théocraties. La mutation de la démocratie indienne versant dans la dictature est le fil conducteur de notre livre.La démocratie indienne versant dans la dictature, telle n'est apparemment pas l'opinion des partenaires de l'Inde, qui mettent en avant son statut démocratique et continuent de la célébrer et de dialoguer avec elle. Quels sont les ressorts du succès international de Narendra Modi, celui que vous appelez le « Erdogan hindou » ?Oui, nous le comparons au président turc parce qu'il y a beaucoup de similarités entre la trajectoire politique de ces deux leaders. Ils sont à la tête de deux États au départ laïcs, mais issus de partis religieux. Ces deux hommes forts sont en train de conduire leur pays vers le fondamentalisme religieux. Or, si les relations entre Erdogan et ses partenaires occidentaux se sont compliquées, Modi continue d'être reçu avec tous les égards dans les capitales occidentales. C'est sans doute parce que Narendra Modi a eu la chance d'arriver au moment où l'Occident avait besoin d'un contrepoids face à l'expansionnisme chinois dans ce qu'on appelle en géopolitique la « zone indo-pacifique ». Les Occidentaux ont trouvé dans l'Inde, pays aujourd'hui puissamment armé, le candidat idéal pour contenir les routes de la soie de Xi Jinping. Cela s'est traduit par le renforcement des partenariats stratégiques entre l'Inde et ses partenaires occidentaux.Les honneurs pleuvent sur le leader indien. En France, il a été reçu, le 14 juillet 2023, sur les Champs-Élysées. Invité d'honneur, il a reçu des mains du président français la grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur. Avec ma co-autrice, on voit dans cette démarche un énorme paradoxe et on s'est demandé : s'il est vrai qu'on n'est pas obligé d'être regardant pour faire du commerce avec un pays, est-ce que la patrie des droits de l'homme est obligée de récompenser un homme qui coupe les libertés de ses concitoyens, et cela précisément le jour où elle célèbre à travers sa Révolution l'arrivée des libertés ? Les symboles ont leur importance.À écouter aussiNarendra Modi en France: « Aucune politique étrangère ne se fait sur la seule question des valeurs »Nous sommes à quelques jours des législatives indiennes. Narendra Modi demeure très populaire dans son pays. Selon les sondages, son parti le BJP pourrait remporter les élections avec une majorité absolue. Croyez-vous que les jeux soient d'ores et déjà faits ?Pas nécessairement. D'abord, je pense qu'en politique, les jeux ne sont jamais faits d'avance et il peut toujours se passer quelque chose. Il peut y avoir des surprises de dernière minute, un coup de théâtre qui fasse que finalement, les pronostics soient déjoués. Pour l'instant, en effet, Narendra Modi apparaît comme archi favori, parce qu'il dispose d'une machine électorale absolument énorme : de l'argent, des outils de propagande phénoménaux qui sont dus notamment au fait qu'il est au pouvoir depuis 10 ans et qu'il se présente pour la troisième fois successive au scrutin des électeurs. Il domine la scène politique, car en face de lui, l'opposition est complètement déstructurée, atomisée.Finalement, le sortant a un désert en face de lui, ce qui pourrait lui être favorable. Mais on n'est pas à abri d'un grain de sable. Tout récemment, la Cour suprême a, par exemple, annulé le dispositif de financement de la vie politique qui profitait très largement, très majoritairement au parti au pouvoir, le BJP de Narendra Modi. Cette décision remet un peu en cause un certain nombre de choses, car on s'est aperçu que le parti de Modi est financé par de grands milliardaires et de grandes entreprises. Ces découvertes peuvent intervenir dans les calculs des électeurs. Je resterai donc encore prudent.Dans la tête de Narendra Modi, par Sophie Landrin et Guillaume Delacroix. Solin/Actes Sud, 271 pages, 21 euros.

En Inde, des élections législatives importantes, vues comme un scrutin XXL, vont se dérouler du 19 avril au 4 juin. Près d'un milliard d'Indiens sont invités à glisser dans les urnes leurs bulletins indiquant leurs choix. Le Premier ministre sortant Narendra Modi et sa formation, le Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), au pouvoir depuis 10 ans, sont les principaux favoris. Qui est Narendra Modi ? Fossoyeur de la démocratie indienne, comme le disent ses détracteurs, ou grand modernisateur, si l'on croit ses partisans ? Réponses dans Dans la tête de Narendra Modi, ouvrage entre biographie et analyse que consacrent au Premier ministre indien deux journalistes du Monde.En quelque 270 pages, le livre brosse le portrait de ce véritable animal politique qu'on connaît mal en Occident. Mêlant récit et analyse, les auteurs racontent son parcours personnel, dressent le bilan de son action politique et s'attachent à pointer du doigt, derrière ses bravades sur l'Inde superpuissance en devenir, le vrai dessein idéologique de Modi visant à asseoir la suprématie des hindous et à perpétuer la domination des hautes castes dans la société indienne. Rencontre avec le co-auteur Guillaume Delacroix.RFI : Une étude psychologique ? Une biographie ? Comment peut-on qualifier votre livre, Guillaume Delacroix ?Guillaume Delacroix : C'est un livre d'enquête journalistique. Nous sommes deux à l'avoir écrit : Sophie Landrin, correspondante du Monde à Delhi, et moi-même, qui ai passé huit ans en Inde, à Bombay, pour Le Monde également. Ce dont on s'était rendu compte, c'est que le personnage de Modi est porteur d'une idéologie très ancienne, qui a bientôt 100 ans. Ce qui est en train de se passer en Inde vient de très très loin. Pour nous, c'est un tournant dans le régime politique et dans la vie démocratique de ce grand pays.Ça vient d'une structuration de la pensée nationaliste hindoue qui remonte à 1925. Et il nous semblait intéressant de justement remonter aux racines de cette idéologie pour comprendre pourquoi Modi est arrivé au pouvoir et « pour quoi ? », en deux mots, c'est-à-dire : Quel est le dessein ? Quel objectif poursuit-il ? On a proposé nos services à Actes Sud, qui avait justement une série correspondant exactement à cette approche, qui s'appelait Dans la tête de…. Actes Sud avait déjà publié un certain nombre de Dans la tête de… consacrés aux dirigeants politiques mondiaux et il manquait Narendra Modi sur l'étagère. Dans les librairies en Europe, il y a extrêmement peu de livres sur l'Inde et encore moins sur Narendra Modi, presque rien. Donc, notre livre est venu combler en quelque sorte un vide.Votre essai s'ouvre sur l'anecdote de la pose de la première pierre du temple d'Ayodhya. Qu'est-ce qu'elle symbolise, cette anecdote ?Ce temple d'Ayodhya, en fait, tout passe par lui. C'est un instrument politique. Ce temple a été construit sur les ruines d'une mosquée, elle-même démolie par des fanatiques en 1992 sous la baguette de Narendra Modi qui était, à l'époque, un jeune cacique de son parti. Il avait organisé avec le président du parti de l'époque cette démolition. C'est l'achèvement du rêve dominateur de l'hindouisme. C'était l'une des trois priorités que s'était fixées la mouvance nationaliste hindoue il y a un siècle, il y a même plus d'un siècle, à savoir : asseoir la suprématie de la majorité hindoue sur le reste de la population, les musulmans et les chrétiens.On connaît mal en Occident Narendra Modi. Qui est-il ? D'où vient-il ? Comment est-il devenu Premier ministre de l'Inde ? Il tranche vraiment avec ses prédécesseurs parce que son parcours personnel est atypique. Il n'est pas lettré, il n'est pas éduqué, il n'a pas fait d'études comme beaucoup de Premiers ministres indiens avant lui. On pense tous à Nehru ou à Indira Gandhi, mais pas seulement. Son dernier prédécesseur, du parti du Congrès, Manmohan Singh, était un grand économiste. Vajpayee qui, lui, était du parti de Modi et qui a occupé le poste de Premier ministre il y a une vingtaine d'années, était un brahmane lettré. On pense que Narendra Modi n'a même pas le bac… Enfin, il y a un flou artistique qui entoure tout cela. Une légende s'est construite autour de l'homme, le self-made man, l'autodidacte…Ce qui est certain, c'est que Narendra Modi est un apparatchik. Il a été formé dès son plus jeune âge, dès l'âge de huit ans, dans la nébuleuse nationaliste hindoue, incarnée par une organisation paramilitaire, l'Association des volontaires de la nation (le RSS). Il a gravi les échelons progressivement au sein de cette organisation et a été porté au pouvoir sans être candidat à des élections. En 2001, ses supérieurs l'ont nommé à la tête de l'État du Gujarat, dont il est originaire, qui se trouve être aussi l'État natal du Mahatma Gandhi. C'est seulement en 2002 qu'il a été élu par un électorat majoritairement hindou. Il est populaire au Gujarat, sans doute parce qu'il avait « laissé faire » – c'est l'expression usitée en Inde – des pogroms anti-musulmans qui ont marqué l'histoire de l'Inde contemporaine. Les pogroms ont lancé en quelque sorte la carrière politique de Narendra Modi !Vous racontez dans votre livre – et c'est passionnant – comment, malgré sa contribution à la cause du nationalisme hindou, il n'a pas été le premier choix des hiérarques de son organisation lorsqu'il a fallu choisir une tête de liste « premier ministrable » avant les élections législatives de 2014…Narendra Modi dérangeait en fait au sein de sa propre famille politique parce qu'il était atypique, et surtout parce qu'il ne venait pas des hautes castes. L'Inde est connue pour son système de castes très rigide, qui divise la société en quelque 25 000 castes. Le mouvement hindouiste est dirigé par des hommes de haute caste et pour ces dirigeants, Modi, qui est issu d'une classe sociale modeste, ne pouvait pas être leur candidat à la primature. Finalement, parce que Modi est un homme talentueux, charismatique, qui sait manier la carotte et le bâton, il a réussi à emporter le choix des autorités du RSS comme candidat de son parti pour le poste de Premier ministre. C'était finalement un bon choix puisqu'il a gagné l'élection.Il s'est aussi révélé être un bon soldat, qui porte avec conviction et fidélité le message de son mouvement, l'hindutva. Or, qu'est-ce que l'hindutva ?Tout cela vient de loin. Narendra Modi est l'aboutissement du cheminement lent, progressif de l'idée du suprémacisme hindou, qui débouche aujourd'hui sur une polarisation extrême. L'hindutva, c'est l'idée que la majorité a des droits supérieurs aux minorités, et c'est pour cela qu'on adopte des lois stigmatisantes et qu'on établit une forme d'apartheid rampant. C'est un peu ce qui est en train de se passer aujourd'hui. On assiste à une institutionnalisation de la ségrégation entre les hindous d'une part, et d'autre part, ceux qui appartiennent à des religions différentes, celles des « envahisseurs » en fait. Modi parle beaucoup d'esclavage, c'est-à-dire en gros 1 000 ans d'occupation musulmane, puis 200 ans d'occupation britannique. Cela se traduit aujourd'hui par des mosquées que l'on détruit, comme cela s'est passé à Ayodhya avec la destruction de la mosquée Babri en 1992.L'hindutva, c'est ça, c'est dominer et faire croire à une masse solidaire d'hindous que leur religion est supérieure aux autres religions. C'est bien sûr une fiction, mais pendant ce temps-là, alors qu'on unifie les hindous contre les musulmans et les chrétiens, on ne parle pas des fractures qui divisent la société indienne, où le pouvoir est entre les mains de la plus haute caste, les brahmanes. Obnubilée par la question musulmane, la population hindoue vit dans l'ignorance de cette situation.Si je vous comprends bien, Guillaume Delacroix, le véritable objectif de Narendra Modi n'est pas la marginalisation des minorités, mais la perpétuation de la hiérarchie des castes. C'est ça, le dessein caché ?C'est vraiment le cœur de notre livre avec Sophie Landrin. L'objectif de ce gouvernement n'est pas tant l'hindouisme que le castéisme, c'est-à-dire la domination de la société indienne avec le maintien du pouvoir entre les mains d'une oligarchie de hautes castes. Alors après, on peut gloser sur la définition de ce qu'est l'Inde aujourd'hui. On l'appelle encore « la plus grande démocratie du monde ». Nous, on pense que ce n'est plus le cas. Elle a peut-être encore quelques traits de démocratie parce qu'il y a des élections, et même des alternances, sur le plan de la gouvernance régionale. Mais force est de constater que l'État de droit en Inde est battu en brèche tous les jours. Le pouvoir aujourd'hui est maintenant entre les mains d'une oligarchie, avec un mélange de genres absolument inédit entre le politique et le religieux.Narendra Modi se pose en grand prêtre, en gourou, quand il préside à des cérémonies, comme il l'a fait à Ayodhya où il a présidé, fin janvier, l'inauguration du temple bâti sur les ruines de la mosquée abattue. Ce mélange du politique et religieux est totalement en décalage avec le rôle imputé au Premier ministre de l'Inde dans la Constitution, qui est égalitaire et séculariste. Selon la Constitution de 1950 toujours en vigueur, l'Inde doit accueillir toutes les religions et ne doit en privilégier aucune.C'est en fait le contraire qui se passe depuis dix ans, en toute impunité, en attendant le changement de la Constitution...C'est un peu, si vous voulez, le souhait des nationalistes hindous et des plus radicaux de cette frange politique. Elle veut prendre sa revanche sur la partition de 1947, lorsque l'Inde est devenue indépendante. Le pays a été divisé en deux, avec d'un côté le Pakistan qui s'est défini comme une république islamique, et de l'autre, l'Inde qui a souhaité, sous la férule de Gandhi et de Nehru, demeurer laïque. Aujourd'hui, la droite hindouiste veut revenir là-dessus et réclame que, puisque les musulmans ont eu leur État avec le Pakistan, l'Inde doit être un État hindou. Nous expliquons dans notre livre que ce débat va au-delà du religieux pour rappeler que, pour une frange de la droite hindouiste, l'hindouisme est dans l'ADN, dans le sang des gens.L'hindouisation du pays semble être allée de pair avec une véritable dérive autoritaire. Dressant le bilan des dix années de Narendra Modi à la tête du pays, vous évoquez dans votre livre un « gouvernement par la peur » qui touche les minorités, mais aussi les médias, les intellectuels, les universitaires, les étudiants. On assiste à un sérieux rétrécissement des libertés. Comment est-on passé de la démocratie bureaucratique et chaotique de l'Inde d'antan à cet État quasi orwellien ?Il ne faut pas penser que tout s'est fait en un jour et que, lorsque Narendra Modi a pris les rênes de l'Inde en mai 2014, tout a basculé. Tout cela était en germe en fait dans l'histoire politique de l'Inde. C'est simplement qu'avec le BJP au pouvoir, tout a été démultiplié. Le braconnage des élus, par exemple, existait avant, mais le phénomène a été démultiplié par 100, peut-être par 1 000. L'Inde a toujours été un pays inégalitaire. La peur du plus fort, du plus puissant touche aujourd'hui la gouvernance, même les gens à la tête du pays. Les témoignages que nous avons recueillis auprès des personnes participant aux réunions décisionnaires dans le bureau du Premier ministre nous ont laissés entendre que tout le monde a le doigt sur la couture du pantalon, si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, parce qu'ils ont tous peur. D'ailleurs, c'est dans le bureau du Premier ministre que toutes les décisions sont prises, car il y a aujourd'hui une concentration absolument inédite du pouvoir entre les mains d'un seul homme. Les ministres sont tous des fantoches et ils ont tous peur de parler, de déplaire au chef. Et cette peur se dissémine, se répand à travers le pays.À lire aussiInde: le BJP de Narendra Modi en campagne pour conserver New Delhi aux élections généralesLes gens ont peur parce que le Parlement a voté de nouvelles lois liberticides qui réduisent la liberté d'expression des citoyens. Le gouvernement a autorisé les agences au sein des services secrets, tout comme le fisc, à poursuivre systématiquement les opposants politiques et la société civile. On a fait fermer 20 000 ONG sous prétexte qu'elles touchaient des financements venant de l'étranger ou bien d'être des agents de l'étranger, et donc de promouvoir la sédition et la désagrégation de l'Inde. On a politisé la justice et on a fait peur aux juges en les nommant dans des bleds éloignés s'ils passent des jugements considérés comme étant critiques du gouvernement. Encore tout récemment, deux étudiants ont été suspendus d'une grande université parce qu'ils avaient osé lancer un débat sur le temple d'Ayodhya dans l'amphithéâtre. Les Indiens vivent aujourd'hui dans un régime de peur généralisée, dans lequel les victimes sont transformées en coupables et les coupables en innocents.  La presse aussi a fait les frais de ce raidissement du pouvoir qui n'a pas épargné la presse internationale, comme en témoigne l'affaire de la journaliste française Vanessa Dougnac, obligée de quitter l'Inde en février dernier, après avoir été en poste dans ce pays depuis 20 ans. Diriez-vous que cette affaire est révélatrice d'un changement de régime en Inde ?Pour les journalistes exerçant leur métier en Inde, cette affaire a été un électrochoc. C'est la première fois qu'un correspondant étranger est chassé de ce pays. Vanessa Dougnac était correspondante de l'hebdomadaire Le Point, puis du quotidien La Croix. Elle vivait depuis 23 ans en Inde et s'était mariée avec un Indien, avec qui elle a eu un enfant. Les autorités indiennes lui ont reproché d'avoir écrit des reportages « malveillants » et « biaisés » sur l'Inde, alors qu'elle était considérée par ses confrères comme l'une des meilleures spécialistes du pays dans la presse française. Cette affaire est préoccupante, car elle révèle en effet le rétrécissement de la liberté de la presse en Inde.Éclatant dans la foulée d'autres affaires de censure visant la presse indienne et la presse étrangère, cette affaire a valu à l'Inde d'avoir perdu 21 places dans le classement mondial sur la liberté de la presse, où elle se situe, derrière l'Afghanistan, au 161e rang de l'index qui compte 180 pays. Pour ma co-autrice Sophie Landrin et moi, l'affaire de la journaliste française chassée d'Inde était le signe que ce pays est en train de quitter le camp des démocraties pour basculer dans celui des théocraties. La mutation de la démocratie indienne versant dans la dictature est le fil conducteur de notre livre.La démocratie indienne versant dans la dictature, telle n'est apparemment pas l'opinion des partenaires de l'Inde, qui mettent en avant son statut démocratique et continuent de la célébrer et de dialoguer avec elle. Quels sont les ressorts du succès international de Narendra Modi, celui que vous appelez le « Erdogan hindou » ?Oui, nous le comparons au président turc parce qu'il y a beaucoup de similarités entre la trajectoire politique de ces deux leaders. Ils sont à la tête de deux États au départ laïcs, mais issus de partis religieux. Ces deux hommes forts sont en train de conduire leur pays vers le fondamentalisme religieux. Or, si les relations entre Erdogan et ses partenaires occidentaux se sont compliquées, Modi continue d'être reçu avec tous les égards dans les capitales occidentales. C'est sans doute parce que Narendra Modi a eu la chance d'arriver au moment où l'Occident avait besoin d'un contrepoids face à l'expansionnisme chinois dans ce qu'on appelle en géopolitique la « zone indo-pacifique ». Les Occidentaux ont trouvé dans l'Inde, pays aujourd'hui puissamment armé, le candidat idéal pour contenir les routes de la soie de Xi Jinping. Cela s'est traduit par le renforcement des partenariats stratégiques entre l'Inde et ses partenaires occidentaux.Les honneurs pleuvent sur le leader indien. En France, il a été reçu, le 14 juillet 2023, sur les Champs-Élysées. Invité d'honneur, il a reçu des mains du président français la grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur. Avec ma co-autrice, on voit dans cette démarche un énorme paradoxe et on s'est demandé : s'il est vrai qu'on n'est pas obligé d'être regardant pour faire du commerce avec un pays, est-ce que la patrie des droits de l'homme est obligée de récompenser un homme qui coupe les libertés de ses concitoyens, et cela précisément le jour où elle célèbre à travers sa Révolution l'arrivée des libertés ? Les symboles ont leur importance.À écouter aussiNarendra Modi en France: « Aucune politique étrangère ne se fait sur la seule question des valeurs »Nous sommes à quelques jours des législatives indiennes. Narendra Modi demeure très populaire dans son pays. Selon les sondages, son parti le BJP pourrait remporter les élections avec une majorité absolue. Croyez-vous que les jeux soient d'ores et déjà faits ?Pas nécessairement. D'abord, je pense qu'en politique, les jeux ne sont jamais faits d'avance et il peut toujours se passer quelque chose. Il peut y avoir des surprises de dernière minute, un coup de théâtre qui fasse que finalement, les pronostics soient déjoués. Pour l'instant, en effet, Narendra Modi apparaît comme archi favori, parce qu'il dispose d'une machine électorale absolument énorme : de l'argent, des outils de propagande phénoménaux qui sont dus notamment au fait qu'il est au pouvoir depuis 10 ans et qu'il se présente pour la troisième fois successive au scrutin des électeurs. Il domine la scène politique, car en face de lui, l'opposition est complètement déstructurée, atomisée.Finalement, le sortant a un désert en face de lui, ce qui pourrait lui être favorable. Mais on n'est pas à abri d'un grain de sable. Tout récemment, la Cour suprême a, par exemple, annulé le dispositif de financement de la vie politique qui profitait très largement, très majoritairement au parti au pouvoir, le BJP de Narendra Modi. Cette décision remet un peu en cause un certain nombre de choses, car on s'est aperçu que le parti de Modi est financé par de grands milliardaires et de grandes entreprises. Ces découvertes peuvent intervenir dans les calculs des électeurs. Je resterai donc encore prudent.Dans la tête de Narendra Modi, par Sophie Landrin et Guillaume Delacroix. Solin/Actes Sud, 271 pages, 21 euros.

Ajay Bisaria joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1987 and, in a career spanning thirty-five years, dealt with some of India's key economic and security relationships. He served as Indian high commissioner to Pakistan from 2017 to 2020. He has been Indian high commissioner to Canada (2020-22), and India's ambassador to Poland and Lithuania (2015-17). He has also represented the country at the World Bank in Washington DC and in embassies in Berlin and Moscow. He has served in various capacities in the Ministry of External Affairs, Department of Commerce, and the Prime Minister's Office, where he was a key aide to Prime Minister Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from St Stephen's College, Delhi University, an MBA from IIM Calcutta, and a Master's Degree in Public Policy from Princeton University.

Indira Gandhi targeting RSS during Emergency & legitimising it, Rajiv giving up mandate in 1989, and Vajpayee, Advani advancing general elections – these errors changed the course of India's politics. Watch this week's #NationalInterest with ThePrint Editor-In-Chief Shekhar Gupta

Main Atal Hoon is a biopic of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one of India's most formidable statesmen. The film begins with the Kargil War, with Vajpayee pushing back against Pakistan with force and determination. The film then zips through 60 years, documenting Vajpayee's rise and the way in which the political landscape and the country changed. The film features a stellar performance by Pankaj Tripathi, but does it hold one's attention? Find out in our review.

Main Atal Hoon is a biopic of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, one of India's most formidable statesmen. The film begins with the Kargil War, with Vajpayee pushing back against Pakistan with force and determination. The film then zips through 60 years, documenting Vajpayee's rise and the way in which the political landscape and the country changed. The film features a stellar performance by Pankaj Tripathi, but does it hold one's attention? Find out in our review.

'Just like BJP supporters don't praise Vajpayee enough because of his refusal to fully embrace Hindutva, Congress supporters fret when asked about Rajiv Gandhi's achievements,' says Columnist and Author Vir Sanghvi. Watch ThePrint #sharpedge

Welcome to the latest Telugu podcast episode of Raw Talks, a riveting platform where insightful conversations unfold. In this episode, we have the honor of hosting Nara Lokesh, a prominent figure in Andhra Pradesh politics, former MLC, and General Secretary of TDP. Buckle up for an immersive journey into the heart of Andhra Pradesh's political landscape and beyond. Government Initiatives and People's Well-being: Our discussion begins with an in-depth exploration of the government's initiatives led by Lokesh. He sheds light on the transformative actions taken, exemplified by the slogan "Appulu chesi samkshemam chestunna government." We delve into how these initiatives aim to enhance the well-being of the people, with a particular focus on addressing financial concerns through the strategy of "Prajalla Dabbu ni Vrudha chestunna govt." TDP's Vision for Cities and Urban Development: A significant portion of our conversation revolves around TDP's role in envisioning and creating cities. Lokesh provides a unique perspective on urban development, sharing insights into the party's future plans that go beyond the conventional discourse. Join us in unraveling the intricacies of TDP's vision for fostering urban growth. Startup Ecosystem, Democracy, and Economic Aspirations: The dialogue expands into critical areas such as the Startup ecosystem in Andhra Pradesh. Lokesh shares profound thoughts on the accountability within democracy and discusses the potential for the state to evolve into a trillion-dollar economy. Discover how these aspects intertwine to shape the economic and technological trajectory of the region. Insights on Mini Ecosystems, Assembly Dynamics, and Power Shifts: As the conversation deepens, we explore Lokesh's insights on mini ecosystems within India, the dynamics of the Assembly, and the nuances of power shifts in governance. Gain a comprehensive understanding of how these elements contribute to the overall political landscape, setting the stage for a nuanced perspective on governance. Youth in Politics and the Need for Change: Lokesh emphasizes the crucial role of the youth in shaping political discourse. He reflects on the importance of first-time voters contemplating key issues, paying homage to the untold hero, "Vajpayee" garu. Uncover the intriguing concept of the "button syndrome" and engage in conversations about the evolving landscape of democracy and the pressing need for change. Boost Your Knowledge, Stay Informed: Don't miss out on this enriching content! This episode offers a rare opportunity to elevate your understanding of Andhra Pradesh politics. Gain valuable perspectives, witness insightful interviews with politicians, and participate in engaging discussions that contribute to a deeper understanding of Telugu politics. Embark on this enlightening journey now and be an integral part of shaping a more informed society. Subscribe, like, and share to amplify the impact of insightful interviews, thought-provoking discussions, and a comprehensive exploration of the political landscape in Andhra Pradesh. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vamshi-kurapati/message

In episode 78 our guest, professor Nick Wheeler, discusses several crucial aspects of international relations and diplomacy. He explores the concept of "reassurance summits" and the role they play in diplomacy, where leaders attending diplomatic summits seek reassurance and test whether the other side perceives their defensive actions as stemming from fear and insecurity rather than hostile intent. He challenges the conventional wisdom that leaders should only engage in face-to-face diplomacy when their interests are already aligned. He introduces the idea of "security dilemma sensibility" in international relations, challenging the notion that uncertainty inevitably leads to competition and distrust. He emphasizes the need for leaders to understand the defensive motivations of others and break the cycle of misperceptions to promote cooperation and trust. Nick Wheeler delves into the possibility of developing social bonds and trust in the absence of face-to-face interaction. Drawing from Randall Collins' work, he suggests that weaker social bonds can indeed be formed without physical proximity, particularly through textually mediated interactions. He highlights the importance of shared security dilemma sensibility and shared mood in this context. He shares a cautionary tale from Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" to illustrate the limits of trust in transactional relationships. He argues that trust based solely on individual calculations of benefits and risks can quickly erode when the context changes. Shifting his focus to India-Pakistan relations, Wheeler examines the trust dynamics between leaders like Vajpayee and Sharif, emphasizing the importance of "trust, capacity, vulnerability" in assessing whether leaders can fulfill their promises and commitments. He also highlights the complexity of trust and opportunism in adversarial relationships. The discussion continues with an exploration of the role of interpersonal dyads in changing conflict situations. Wheeler underscores the significance of leaders being able to deliver on their commitments and the challenges of scaling up trust beyond individual relationships. He emphasizes the need to embed trust within decision-making processes and society itself to address future uncertainty. Finally he touches upon his upcoming book with Marcus Holmes, "Personal Chemistry: Social Bonds and International Conflict." The book aims to demystify the concept of personal chemistry in international relations by developing a theory that explains why leaders sometimes establish positive interpersonal relationships and sometimes do not. Through case studies, they aim to shed light on the factors influencing leaders' relationships and trust dynamics in diplomacy and conflict resolution.

"Prime ministership is a continuum. If VP Singh had not done Mandal to empower the OBCs, the story for Mr Modi might have been very different. He is today an OBC PM and he's talking about taking power to the most backward, the Mahadalits, the Pasmanda Muslims; those who have been on the peripheries of power are to be given a stake. If VP Singh hadn't done as he did, maybe the BJP would have continued as a Brahmin-Bania party, which it used to be known as" - Neerja Chowdhury, author, 'How Prime Ministers Decide', talks to Manjula Narayan about Indira Gandhi's religiosity, the central issues that each Indian PM has grappled with, Manmohan Singh and the Indo-US Nuclear deal, the friendship between Vajpayee and PV Narasimha Rao, Sonia Gandhi asking VP Singh and Vajpayee for advice and much more.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 859, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: it's my party 1: "Honest Abe" was the first U.S. chief executive from this political party. Republican Party. 2: This country's controversial new prime minister Vajpayee is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. India. 3: A Conservative Party member in Canada or a loyalist during the American Revolution. Tory. 4: Strom Thurmond,1956. Democrat. 5: Strom Thurmond,November 1948. Dixiecrat. Round 2. Category: adjectives of the young and the restless 1: "Abby, I hear The Naked Heiress is gonna be on Jeopardy! that's huge!""Mom, please. I am rich and famous." [Sighs]"Honey, don't you think you're being..."...this adjective that means "world-weary" and "cynical"--it doesn't mean "covered in green gemstones". jaded. 2: "Please, Lily, understand, everything I did was to keep you and the twins safe.""Cane, you pretended that you were dead and made me think that I was sleeping with a ghost. I ended up in an insane asylum. You're..."...this 10-letter adjective from the Latin for "look down on" (and favored by Daffy Duck on occasion). despicable. 3: ...this 3-word type of punishment outlawed by the 8th Amendment. cruel and unusual. 4: (Mishael Morgan and Bryton James give the clue as Hilary and Devon from The Young and the Restless.) "Devon, please! You're like a teenage boy, we have the whole night to ourselves""I know, Hilary. I'm sorry. It's just that my passion for you, sometimes it's so overwhelming, so undeniable. It's this adjective, from the Latin for 'devour'". voracious. 5: ...this passionate type of love named for the Greek god of love. erotic. Round 3. Category: "m"-brace me 1: Funnel-shaped amplifying device that's an essential cheerleader accessory. a megaphone. 2: Where your name is if it's up in lights in front of a theater. the marquee. 3: 1 of these equals 39.97 inches. meter. 4: From the French, it's a group of wild animals on exhibit. a menagerie. 5: This state’s university has its main campus in College Park. Maryland. Round 4. Category: marine life 1: The red algae pepper dulse and landlady's wig are types of this found in the North Atlantic. seaweed. 2: The green type of this reptile gained protection in the 20th century because of its popular use in soup. the turtle. 3: The last of many books by Jacques Cousteau was titled "The Human, the Orchid, and" this other "O" creature. octopus. 4: Term for the individual animals that make up coral; it also has a less benign medical meaning. a polyp. 5: Natl. Geographic says without this small shrimplike crustacean, most "life forms in the Antarctic would disappear". krill. Round 5. Category: name game 1: Based on the 1990 census, this color is also the fifth most common last name in the U.S.. Brown. 2: Around the time of this war, Kimberley was a popular name for British boys. the Boer War. 3: This Russian form of George was in the headlines in 1961. Yuri (as in Yuri Gagarin). 4: The name of this villain in "Othello" is a Spanish version of James. Iago. 5: This presidential first name was originally used as a given name to honor Protestant reformer John. Calvin. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Former NCB officer Sameer Wankhede, once the toast of headlines with his purported investigations into Bollywood's ‘seedy' side, is now under investigation for ‘criminal misconduct & corrupt practices'. In Episode 1231 of Cut The Clutter, Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta talks about Wankhede's moment in the sun, and what exactly he is accused of now.

Kesava Menon comes on The Pakistan Experience to discuss his book, "Never Tell Them We Are The Same People: Notes on Pakistan" - on this episode we discuss the SCO, Indo-Pak Relations, the possibility of peace and friendship between the countries, and how India is changing. Kesava Menon is an analyst and writer on political affairs. He was The Hindu's first Pakistan Correspondent, from July 1990 to October 1993. He was also the Editor of the Malayalam newspaper 'Mathrubhumi' for 8 years. The Pakistan Experience is an independently produced podcast looking to tell stories about Pakistan through conversations. Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thepakistanexperience To support the channel: Jazzcash/Easypaisa - 0325 -2982912 Patreon.com/thepakistanexperience And Please stay in touch: https://twitter.com/ThePakistanExp1https://www.facebook.com/thepakistanexperiencehttps://instagram.com/thepakistanexpeperience The podcast is hosted by comedian and writer, Shehzad Ghias Shaikh. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Theatre from Brooklyn College. He is also one of the foremost Stand-up comedians in Pakistan and frequently writes for numerous publications. Instagram.com/shehzadghiasshaikh Facebook.com/Shehzadghias/ Twitter.com/shehzad89 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction and SCO 4:55 Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan 7:54 Modi's visit to Pakistan 9:30 Perceptions of Pakistan before coming 12:30 Experience of living in Pakistan 18:30 The Hindu and the Left 23:30 Land Reforms and Nehru's Legacy 26:50 India's Economic Strength and Aggression 29:00 India's importance in Pakistan's electoral politics 30:30 Establishment and Peace with India 32:30 Visiting Pakistan 1990-1993 41:00 Meeting Pakistani politicians 44:50 Takeaways from visiting Pakistan 47:00 Never tell them we are the same people 50:50 How is India changing 57:30 Can we be friends

While founders never had majority & had to keep a diverse coalition intact, today's BJP doesn't need allies. Credit goes to Modi-Shah but they should thank founders, especially Vajpayee.

Happy Independence Day!- Pranay Kotasthane and RSJThis newsletter can often seem pessimistic about India. That isn’t true, though. Every year, on Independence Day, we remind ourselves and our readers why we write this newsletter. This is how we ended the Independence Day edition of 2020:“What we have achieved so far is precious. That’s worth reminding ourselves today. We will go back to writing future editions lamenting our state of affairs.We will do so because we know it’s worth it.”  This year we thought it would be fun (?) to run through every year since 1947 and ask ourselves what happened in the year that had long-term repercussions for our nation. This kind of thing runs a serious risk. It can get tedious and all too familiar. Most of us know the landmark events of recent history and what they meant for the nation. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ve given an honest try (of over 8000 words) to see if there’s a different way of looking at these familiar events and their impact on us. Here we go.1947 - 1960: Sense Of A Beginning 1947Perhaps the most significant “What, if?” question for independent India surfaced on 17th August 1947 when the Radcliffe Line was announced. The partition of the Indian subcontinent has cast a long shadow. What if it had never happened? What if Nehru-Jinnah-Gandhi were able to strike a modus vivendi within a one-federation framework? These questions surface every year around independence.The indelible human tragedy of the partition aside, would an Akhand Bharat have served its citizens better? We don’t think so. We agree with Ambedkar’s assessment of this question. In Pakistan or the Partition of India, he approaches the question with detachment and realism, concluding that the forces of “communal malaise” had progressed to such an extent that resisting a political division would have led to a civil war, making everyone worse off. The partition must have been handled better without the accompanying humanitarian disaster. But on the whole, the partition was inevitable by 1947.“That the Muslim case for Pakistan is founded on sentiment is far from being a matter of weakness; it is really its strong point. It does not need deep understanding of politics to know that the workability of a constitution is not a matter of theory. It is a matter of sentiment. A constitution, like clothes, must suit as well as please. If a constitution does not please, then however perfect it may be, it will not work. To have a constitution which runs counter to the strong sentiments of a determined section is to court disaster if not to invite rebellion.” [Read the entire book here]1948What if Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t killed that year? How would the course of our history change? Gandhi spoke like an idealist and worked like a realist. He was possibly the most aware of the gap between the lofty ideals of our constitution and the reality of the Indian minds then. He knew the adoption of the constitution was only half the work done. He’d likely have devoted the rest of his life to building a liberal India at the grassroots level. His death pushed a particular stream of right-wing Hindu consciousness underground. We still carry the burden of that unfinished work.1949The Constituent Assembly met for the first time in December 1946. By November 26th 1949, this assembly adopted a constitution for India. Even a half-constructed flyover in Koramangala has taken us five years. For more context, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly began work on 10th August 1947, and their first constitution came into force in March 1956, only to be abrogated two years later. India’s founding fathers and mothers were acutely aware that they were elite, unelected, and unrepresentative of the median Indian. They dared to imagine a new nation-state while grappling with that period's harsh economic, social, and political realities. Their work should inspire us to strengthen, improve, and rebuild—but never to give up on—the Republic of India.For more, check out the miracle that is India’s Constitution in our Republic Day 2021 special edition.1950We have written about our Constitution a number of times. It is an inspiring and audacious document in its ambition to shape a modern nation. It has its flaws. Some consider it too liberal; others think it makes the State overbearing. Some find it too long; others feel it comes up short. This may all be true. However, there is no doubt our constitution has strengthened our democracy, protected the weak and continues to act as a tool for social change. It is our North Star. And a damn good one at that. 1951Few post-independence institutions have stood the test of time as the Finance Commission (FC), first established in 1951. In federal systems, horizontal and vertical imbalances in revenue generation and expenditure functions are commonplace. Closing the gap requires an impartial institution that is well-regarded by various levels of government and the people. The Finance Commission is that institution.It’s not as if it didn’t face any challenges. As a constitutional body established under article 280 of the Constitution, it was sidelined by an extra-constitutional and powerful Planning Commission until 2014. But we have had 15 FCs in total, and each key tax revenue-sharing recommendation has become government policy.1952Our Constitution adopted a universal adult franchise as the basis for elections. Every citizen was to be part of the democratic project. There was to be no bar on age, sex, caste or education. And this was to be done in one of the most unequal societies in the world. The ambition was breathtaking. To put this in context, women were allowed to vote in Switzerland only in 1971. Not only did we aim for this, but we also moved heaven and earth to achieve it in 1952. In his book India After Gandhi, Ram Guha describes the efforts of the government officials led by the first Election Commissioner, Sukumar Sen, to reach the last man or woman for their ballot. The elites may lament vote bank politics or cash for votes scams and question the wisdom of universal franchise. But we shouldn’t have had it any other way. And, for the record, our people have voted with remarkable sophistication in our short independent history. 1953 For a new nation-state, the Republic of India punched above its weight in bringing hostilities on the Korean peninsula to an end. Not only did the Indian government’s work shape the Armistice Agreement, but it also chaired a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) that was set up to decide the future of nearly 20,000 prisoners of war from both sides. This experience during the Cold War strengthened India’s advocacy of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).  1954Article 25 guaranteed the freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate religion to all citizens. But how does one define a religious practice? And can a practice under the garb of religion breach the boundary of individual rights or public morality? This is a familiar conflict zone in secular States and would inevitably show up in India because everything in India can be construed as a religious practice. Like Ambedkar said during the constituent assembly debates:“The religious conceptions in this country are so vast that they cover every aspect of life from birth to death…there is nothing extraordinary in saying that we ought to strive hereafter to limit the definition of religion in such a manner that we shall not extend it beyond beliefs and such rituals as may be connected with ceremonials which are essentially religious..."In 1954, the Supreme Court gave a landmark judgment on what constitutes a religious practice in what’s known as the Shirur Math case. It held that the term religion would cover all practices integral to that religion. Further, the Court will determine what practice will be deemed essential with reference to doctrines within that religion itself.This test of ‘essentiality’ in religion has kept the public, the legislature and the courts busy since (entry of women in Sabarimala, headscarf in Islam, to name two). The outcome has bent towards individual liberty in most contexts, but the ambiguity in the definition of essential means it could go the other way too.1955Another wild "What, if” moment that we like to recall relates to Milton Friedman’s visit to the Indian finance ministry in 1955. What shape would India’s economy have taken had his seminal document “A Memorandum to the Government of India 1955” been heeded?In this note, Friedman gets to the root of India’s macroeconomic problems—an overburdened investment policy, restrictive policies towards the private sector, erratic monetary policy, and a counterproductive exchange control regime. Being bullish about India’s prospects was courageous when most observers wrote epitaphs about the grand Indian experiment. But Friedman was hopeful and critical both.The Indian government, for its part, was humble enough to seek the advice of foreigners from opposing schools of thought. At the same time, it was too enamoured by the Soviet command and control model. In fact, many items from Friedman’s note can be repurposed as economic reforms even today.Here’re our points from Friedman’s note.1956The idea of One Nation, One ‘X’ (language, election, song, tax, choose any other) is both powerful and seductive. It is not new, however. Back in the 50s, there was a view that we must not strengthen any identity that divides us. So when the question of reorganisation of the colonial provinces into new states came up, an argument was made that it must be done on factors other than language. Nehru, ever the modernist, thought the creation of language-based states would lead us down the path of ethnic strife. The example of nation-states in Europe built on language in the 19th century and the two devastating world wars thereafter were too recent then. So, he demurred.Agitation, hunger strikes and deaths followed before we chose language as the primary basis for reorganising the states. It was perhaps the best decision taken by us in the 50s. As the years since have shown, only a polity assured of its heritage and identity will voluntarily accept diversity. The melding of our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition. We should never forget this.1957India’s economic strategy of state-led industrialisation through deficit financing in pursuit of import substitution took off with the Second Five-Year Plan. Heavy industries needed imported machinery, inflating India’s import bill. Since the exchange rate was pegged to the British pound, it meant that Indian exports became pricier. This imbalance between rising imports and flagging exports was financed by running down the foreign exchange reserves. By 1957, India witnessed its first foreign exchange crisis. This event had a significant effect on India’s economy. Instead of devaluing the rupee, the government opted for foreign exchange budgeting - every investment in a project needed government approval for the foreign exchange required to buy foreign inputs. The immediate crisis in 1957 led to controls that worsened India’s economic prospects over the next 35 years.1958The government nationalised all insurance companies a couple of years earlier. India hadn’t gotten into a socialist hell yet, so this was a bit of a surprise. The proximate cause was a fraud that few private life insurers had committed by misusing the policyholders’ funds to help their industrialist friends. A run-of-the-mill white-collar crime that should have been dealt with by the criminal justice system. But the government viewed it as a market failure and moved to nationalise the entire industry. It would take another 45 years for private players to come back to insurance. Insurance penetration in India meanwhile remained among the lowest in the world.  Also, in 1958, Feroze Gandhi took to the floor of Lok Sabha to expose how LIC, the state insurer, had diverted its funds to help Haridas Mundhra, a Calcutta-based businessman. The same crime that private insurers had done.The government would repeat this pattern of getting involved where there was no market failure. The outcomes would inevitably turn out to be worse. Seven decades later, we remain instinctively socialist and wary of capital. Our first reaction to something as trifling as a surge price by Ola or a service charge levied by restaurants is to ask the State to interfere.1959“The longest guest of the Indian government”, the 14th Dalai Lama pre-empted the Chinese government’s plans for his arrest and escaped to India. Not only did India provide asylum, but it also became home to more than a hundred thousand Tibetans. Because of the bold move by the Indian government in 1959, the Central Tibetan Administration continues its struggle as a Nation and a State in search of regaining control over their Country to this day. This event also changed India-China relations for the decades to come.1960Search as hard as we might; we hardly got anything worth discussing for this year. Maybe we were all sitting smugly waiting for an avalanche of crisis to come our way. Steel plants, dams and other heavy industries were being opened. The budget outlay for agriculture was reduced. We were talking big on the international stage about peace and non-alignment. But if you had looked closer, things were turning pear-shaped. The many dreams of our independence were turning sour.The 60s: Souring Of The Dream1961The Indian Army marched into Goa in December 1961. The 450-year Portuguese colonial rule ended, and the last colonial vestige in India was eliminated. It took this long because Portugal’s dictator Antonio Salazar stuck to his guns on controlling Portuguese colonies in the subcontinent, unlike the British and the French. Portugal’s membership in NATO further made it difficult for the Indian government to repeat the operations in Hyderabad and Junagadh. Nevertheless, that moment eventually arrived in 1961. This was also the year when India’s first indigenous aircraft, the HAL HF-24 Marut, took its first flight. Made in Bengaluru by German designer Kurt Tank, the aircraft was one of the first fighter jets made outside the developed world. The aircraft served well in the war that came a decade later. It never lived up to its promises, but it became a matter of immense pride and confidence for a young nation-state.1962Among the lowest points in the history of independent India. We’ve written about our relationship with China many times in the past editions. The 1962 war left a deep impact on our psyche. We didn’t recover for the rest of the decade. The only good thing out of it was the tempering of idealism in our approach to international relations. That we take a more realist stance these days owes its origins to the ‘betrayal’ of 1962.1963ISRO launched the first sounding rocket in November 1963. Over the years, this modest beginning blossomed into a programme with multiple launch vehicles. The satellite programmes also took off a few years later, making India a mighty player in the space sector. 1964If you told anyone alive in 1964 that less than 60 years later, Nehru would be blamed for all that was wrong with India by a substantial segment of its population, they would have laughed you out of the room. But here we are in 2022, and there’s never a day that passes without a WhatsApp forward that talks about Nehru’s faults. It seems inevitable that by the time we celebrate the centenary of our independence, he would be a borderline reviled figure in our history. But that would be an aberration. In the long arc of history, he will find his due as a flawed idealist who laid the foundation of modern India. 1964 was the end of an era.1965As the day when Hindi would become the sole official language of the Indian Union approached, the anti-Hindi agitation in the Madras presidency morphed into riots. Many people died in the protests, and it led to the current equilibrium on language policy. The “one State, one language” project moved to the back burner, even as Hindi became an important link language across the country. The lesson was the same as in the case of the 1956 states reorganisation: melding our diversity into a single identity cannot be a top-down imposition.1966The two wars in the decade's first half, the inefficient allocation of capital driven by the second and third five-year plans, and the consecutive monsoon failure meant India was on the brink in 1966. The overnight devaluation of the Rupee by over 50 per cent, the timely help with food grains from the US and some providence pulled us back from it. The green revolution followed, and we have remained self-sufficient in food since.The experience of being on the brink taught us nothing. We still believe in the Pigouvian theory of market failure, where government policies are expected to deliver optimality.  Strangely, the idea that we reform only in crisis has only strengthened. There cannot be worse ways to change oneself than under the shadow of a crisis. But we have made a virtue out of it.1967This was the year when the Green Revolution took baby steps, and the Ehlrichian prediction about India’s impending doom was put to rest. But it was also the year when the Indian government made a self-goal by adopting a policy called items reserved for manufacture exclusively by the small-scale sector. By reserving whole product lines for manufacturing by small industries, this policy kept Indian firms small and uncompetitive. And like all bad ideas, it had a long life. The last 20 items on this list were removed only in April 2015. We wrote about this policy here. 1968In the past 75 years, we have reserved some of our worst public policies for the education sector. We have an inverted pyramid. A handful of tertiary educational institutions produce world-class graduates at the top. On the other end, we have a total failure to provide quality primary education to the masses. It is not because of a lack of intent. The National Education Policy (NEP) that first came up in 1968 is full of ideas, philosophy and a desire to take a long-term view about education in India. But it was unmoored from the economic or social reality of the nation. We often say here that we shouldn’t judge a policy based on its intentions. That there’s no such thing as a good policy but bad implementation because thinking about what can work is part of policy itself. NEP is Exhibit A in favour of this argument.1969 The nationalisation of 14 private-sector banks was a terrible assault on economic freedom under the garb of serving the public interest. The sudden announcement of a change in ownership of these banks was challenged in the courts, but the government managed to thwart it with an ordinance. Fifty years later, we still have low credit uptake even as governments continue to recapitalise loss-making banks with taxpayer money.1970The dominant economic thinking at the beginning of the 70s in India placed the State at the centre of everything. But that wasn’t how the world was moving. There was a serious re-examination of the relationship between the State and the market happening elsewhere. The eventual shift to a deregulated, small government economic model would happen by the decade's end. This shift mostly passed India by. But there were a few voices who questioned the state orthodoxy and, in some ways, sowed the intellectual seeds for liberalisation in future. In 1970, Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai published their monograph, India: Planning for Industrialisation, which argued that our economic policies since independence had crippled us. It showed with data how central planning, import substitution, public sector-led industrial policy and license raj have failed. But it found no takers. In fact, we doubled down on these failed policies for the rest of the decade. It was a tragedy foretold. What if someone had gone against the consensus and paid attention to that paper? That dissent could perhaps have been the greatest service to the nation. It is useful to remember this today when any scepticism about government policies is met with scorn. Dissent is good. The feeblest of the voice might just be right.The 70s: Losing The Plot1971Kissinger visited China in July 1971 via Pakistan. Responding to the changing world order, India and the USSR signed an Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in August of that year. India had become an ally of the USSR. Four months later, the India-Pakistan war pitted India and the USSR against Pakistan, China, and the US. The Indian strategic community came to internalise USSR as a super-reliable partner and the West as a supporter of India’s foes. It took another three decades, and the collapse of the USSR, for a change in this thinking. Even today, Russia finds massive support in the Indian strategic establishment. We had problematised this love for Russia here. 1972India won the 1972 war with Pakistan and liberated Bangladesh. India’s unilateral action stopped a humanitarian disaster. The victory was decisive, and the two parties met in Simla to agree on the way forward. This should have been a slam dunk for India in resolving festering issues on the international boundary, Kashmir and the role of the third parties. But international diplomacy is a two-level game, and Bhutto played that to his advantage. We explained this in edition 30. We paid a high price for giving away that win to Bhutto.1973The Kesavananda Bharti verdict of the Supreme Court rescued the Republic of India from a rampaging authoritarian. The basic structure doctrine found a nice balance to resolve the tension between constitutional immutability and legislative authority to amend the constitution. Bibhu Pani discussed this case in more detail here. 1974You are the State. Here are your crimes. You force import substitution, you regulate the currency, you misallocate capital, you let the public sector and a handful of licensed private players produce inferior quality products at a high cost, you raise the marginal tax rate at the highest level to 97 per cent, you run a large current account deficit, and you cannot control Rupee depreciation.Result?People find illegal ways to bring in foreign goods, currency and gold. And so was born the villain of every urban Bollywood film of the 70s. And a career option for a capitalist-minded kid like me. The Smuggler.But the State isn’t the criminal here. The smuggler is. And the State responded with a draconian law to beat all others. An act the knowledge of whose expanded form would serve kids well in those school quizzes of the 80s. COFEPOSA — The Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Act. A predatory state's defining feature is how it forces ordinary citizens to do unlawful activities. COFEPOSA was the mother of such laws. It has spawned many children. 1975This blank editorial by the Indian Express says it all. 1976We view our population as a core problem. The politicians, the public servants and the ordinary citizens share this view. We don’t want to acknowledge our governance deficit. Calling population a problem allows us to shirk the responsibility of running a functioning State. We have written about the flaw in thinking about the population as a problem on many occasions.How far could we go to control the population? Well, in 1976, during the peak of the Emergency, the State decided to sterilise male citizens against their wishes. This madness ended when the Emergency was lifted. But even today calls for population control keep coming back. 1977The first non-Congress union government was an important milestone for the Indian Republic. While Morarji Desai’s government did reverse the worst excesses of the Emergency rule, its economic policies were less successful. This period went on to witness a demonetisation in search of black money (2016 from the future says Hi!), and the same old counter-productive policies in search of self-reliance.1978Despite all available evidence that statist socialism was an abject failure, the Janata government that came to power decided to double down on it. One of the great ideas of the time was to force MNCs to reduce their stake in their Indian subsidiaries to below 40 per cent. A handful agreed, but the large corporations quit India. One of those who left was IBM in 1978. The many existing installations of IBM computers needed services and maintenance. In a delightful case of unintended consequences, this led to the nationalisation of IBM’s services division (later called CMC). Domestic companies started to serve this niche. Soon there were the likes of Infosys, Wipro and HCL building a business on this. CMC provided a good training ground for young engineers. And so, the Indian IT services industry got underway. It would change the lives of educated Indians forever.1979In a classic case of violating the Tinbergen rule, the Mandal Commission recommended that the reservation policy should be used to address relative deprivation. While the earlier reservations for oppressed castes stood on firm ground as a means for addressing unconscionable historical wrongs, the Mandal Commission stretched the logic too far. Its recommendation would eventually make reservation policy the go-to solution for any group that could flex its political muscles. We wrote about it here. 1980After ditching the Janata experiment and running out of ideas to keep Jan Sangh going, the BJP was formed. It wasn’t a momentous political occasion of any sort then. A party constitution that aimed for Gandhian socialism and offered vague promises of a uniform civil code and nationalism didn’t excite many. Everything else that would propel the party in later years was to be opportunistic add-ons to the ideology. The founding leaders, Advani and Vajpayee, would have been shocked if you told them what the party would be like, four decades later.The 80s: A Million Mutinies Now1981This year witnessed a gradual shift away from doctrinaire socialism in economic policymaking. “The Indira Gandhi government lifted restrictions on the expansion of production, permitted new private borrowing abroad, and continued the liberalisation of import controls,” wrote Walter Anderson. The government also “allowed” some price rises, leading to increased production of key input materials. The government also permitted foreign companies to compete in drilling rights in India. All in all, a year that witnessed changes for the better. 1982The great textile strike of Bombay in 1982 was inevitable. The trade unions had gotten so powerful that there was a competitive race to the bottom on who could be more militant. Datta Samant emerged intent on breaking the monopoly of RMMS on the city's workers. And he did this with ever spiralling demands from mill owners in a sector that was already bloated with overheads and facing competition from far eastern economies. There was no way to meet these demands. The owners locked the mills and left. Never to come back. The old, abandoned mills remained. The workers remained. Without jobs, without prospects and with kids who grew up angry and unemployed. The rise of Shiv Sena, political goondaism and a malevolent form of underworld followed. Bombay changed forever. It was all inevitable.1983The Nellie massacre in Assam and the Dhilwan bus massacre in Punjab represent the year 1983. Things seemed really dark back then. It seemed that the doomsayers would be proved right about India. Eventually, though, the Indian Republic prevailed. 1984Her Sikh bodyguards assassinated India Gandhi. The botched Punjab policy of the previous five years came a full circle with it. An unforgivable backlash against innocent Sikhs followed. A month later, deadly gas leaked out of a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, killing and paralysing thousands. 1984 will rank among the worst years of our republic. There were two silver linings in retrospect. One, we would learn to manage secessionist movements better from the harrowing Punjab experience. Two, had Indira continued, would we have had 1991? Our guess is no.1985This was an eventful year in retrospect. Texas Instruments set up shop in Bangalore. It was to begin one of modern India’s true success stories on the world stage. This was also the year when the Anti-defection law transformed the relationship between the voter and her representative. Political parties became all-powerful, and people’s representatives were reduced to political party agents. We have written about this changing dynamic here. This was also the year when the then commerce minister, VP Singh, visited Malaysia. The visit was significant for India because it served as a reference point for Singh when he visited that country again in 1990, now as the Prime minister. Surprised by Malaysia’s transformation in five years, he asked his team to prepare a strategy paper for economic reforms. This culminated in the “M” document, which became a blueprint for reforms when the time for the idea eventually came in 1991.1986Who is a citizen of India?  This vexing question roiled Assam in the early 80s. The student union protests against the widespread immigration of Bangladeshis turned violent, and things had turned ugly by 1985. The Assam accord of 1985 sought to settle the state's outstanding issues,, including deporting those who arrived after 1971 and a promise to amend the Citizenship Act. The amended Citizenship Act of 1986 restricted the citizenship of India to those born before 1987 only if either of their parents were born in India. That meant children of couples who were illegal immigrants couldn’t be citizens of India simply by virtue of their birth in India. That was that, or so we thought.But once you’ve amended the definition of who can be a citizen of India, you have let the genie out. The events of 2019 will attest to that.1987Rajiv Gandhi’s ill-fated attempt to replicate Indira Gandhi’s success through military intervention in another country began in 1987. In contrast to the 1971 involvement, where Indian forces had the mass support of the local populace, the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) got itself embroiled in a bitter Sri Lankan civil war. Not only did this involvement end in a failure, it eventually led to Rajiv Gandhi’s brutal murder in a terrorist attack. The policy lesson internalised by the strategic community was that India must stay far away from developing and deploying forces overseas.1988Most government communication is propaganda in disguise. However, there are those rare occasions when government messaging transcends the ordinary. In 1988, we saw that rare bird during the peak era of a single government channel running on millions of black and white TV sets across India. A government ad that meant something to all of us and that would remain with us forever. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara got everything right - the song, the singers, the storyline and that ineffable thing called the idea of India. No jingoism, no chest beating about being the best country in the world and no soppy sentimentalism. Just a simple message - we might all sing our own tunes, but we are better together. This is a timeless truth. No nation in history has become better by muting the voice of a section of their own people. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Toh Sur Bane Hamara, indeed.  19891989 will be remembered as the year when the Indian government capitulated to the demands of Kashmiri terrorists in the Rubaiya Sayeed abduction case. It would spark off a series of kidnappings and act as a shot in the arm of radicals. 1990VP Singh dusted off the decade-long copy of the Mandal Commission report and decided to implement it. This wasn’t an ideological revolution. It was naked political opportunism. However, three decades later, the dual impact of economic reforms and social engineering has increased social mobility than ever before. Merit is still a matter of debate in India. But two generations of affirmative action in many of the progressive states have shown the fears of merit being compromised were overblown. The task is far from finished, but Mandal showed that sometimes you need a big bang to get things going, even if your intentions were flawed.1990 also saw the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) from the valley. A tragedy that would bookend a decade of strife and violence in India. The only lesson one should draw from the sad plight of KPs is that the State and the people must protect minority rights. We’re not sure that’s what we have taken away from it. And that’s sad.The 90s: Correcting The Course1991With the benefit of hindsight, the 1991 economic reforms seem inevitable. But things could well have been different. In the minority government, powerful voices advocated in favour of debt restructuring instead of wholesale reforms. In the end, the narrative that these changes were merely a continuation—and not abandonment—of Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s vision for India carried the day. This political chicanery deserves some credit for transforming the life of a billion Indians. 1992Harshad Mehta scammed the stock markets. It wasn’t a huge scam. Nor did it hurt the ordinary Indians. Fewer than 1% invested in markets back then. Yet, the scam did something important. It set in motion a series of reforms that made our capital markets stronger and safer for ordinary investors. Notably, over the years, Mehta came to be seen as some kind of robber baron figure. Capitalism needed an anti-hero to catch the imagination of people. Someone who could reprise in the 90s the Bachchan-esque angry young man roles of the 70s. Mehta might not have been that figure exactly, but he helped a generation transition to the idea that greed could indeed be good.Also, Babri Masjid was brought down by a mob of kar sevaks in 1992. It will remain a watershed moment in our history. The Supreme Court judgement of 2019 might be the final judicial word on it. But we will carry the scars for a long time.1993The tremors of the demolition of the Babri Masjid were felt in 1993. Twelve bombs went off in Bombay on one fateful day. The involvement of the city’s mafia groups was established. The tragic event finally led to the government rescuing the city from the underworld. Not to forget, the Bombay underworld directly resulted from government policies such as prohibition and gold controls. 1994One of the great acts of perversion in our democracy was the blatant abuse of Section 356 of the constitution that allowed the union to dismiss a state government at the slightest pretext. Indira Gandhi turned this into an art form. S. R. Bommai, whose government in Karnataka was dismissed in this manner in 1988, took his case up to the Supreme Court. In 1994, the court delivered a verdict that laid out the guidelines to prevent the abuse of Section 356. It is one of the landmark judgments of the court and restored some parity in Union and state relationship.Article 356 has been used sparingly since. We are a better democracy because of it.1995India joined the WTO, and the first-ever mobile phone call was made this year. But 1995 will forever be remembered as the year when Ganesha idols started drinking milk. This event was a precursor to the many memes, information cascades, and social proofs that have become routine in the information age. 1996Union budgets in India are occasions for dramatic policy announcements. It is a mystery why a regular exercise of presenting the government's accounts should become a policy event. But that’s the way we roll. In 1996 and 1997, P. Chidambaram presented them as the FM of a weak ragtag coalition called the United Front. But he presented two budgets for the ages. The rationalisation of income tax slabs and the deregulation of interest rates created a credit culture that led to the eventual consumption boom in the next decade. We still carry that consumption momentum.1997The creation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is an important public policy milestone for India. By no means perfect, the setting up of TRAI helped overturn a norm where government departments were both players and umpires. TRAI made the separation of “steering” and “rowing” functions a new normal. That template has been copied in several sectors thereafter, most recently in the liberalisation of the space sector. 1998India did Pokhran 2, which gave it the capability to build thermonuclear weapons. We faced sanctions and global condemnation. But the growing economy and a sizeable middle class meant those were soon forgotten. Economic might can let you get away with a lot. We have seen it happen to us, but it is a lesson we don’t understand fully.Also, in 1998, Sonia Gandhi jumped into active politics. The Congress that was ambling towards some sort of internal democracy decided to jettison it all and threw its weight behind the dynasty. It worked out for them for a decade or so. But where are they now? Here’s a question. What if Sonia didn’t join politics then? Congress might have split. But who knows, maybe those splinters might have coalesced in the future with a leader chosen by the workers. And we would have had a proper opposition today with a credible leader.1999This was a landmark year for public policy. For the first time, a union government-run company was privatised wholly. We wrote about the three narratives of disinvestment here. 2000We have a weak, extended and over-centralised state. And to go with it, we have large, unwieldy states and districts that make the devolution of power difficult. In 2000, we created three new states to facilitate administrative convenience. On balance, it has worked well. Despite the evidence, we have managed to create only one more state since. The formation of Telangana was such a political disaster that it will take a long time before we make the right policy move of having smaller states. It is a pity.The 2000s: The Best Of Times2001Not only was the Agra Summit between Musharraf and Vajpayee a dud, but it was followed by a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament. It confirmed a pattern: PM-level bilateral meetings made the Pakistani military-jihadi complex jittery, and it invariably managed to spike such moves with terrorist attacks. 2002There was Godhra and the riots that followed. What else is there to say?2003The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act and the Civil Services Pension Reform are two policy successes with many lessons for future policymakers. We have discussed these on many occasions. 2004The NDA government called for an early election, confident about its prospects. India Shining, its campaign about how good things were, wasn’t too far from the truth. It is how many of us felt during that time. The NDA government had sustained the reform momentum of the 90s with some of the best minds running the key departments. Its loss was unexpected. Chandrababu Naidu, a politician who fashioned himself like a CEO, was taken to the cleaners in Andhra Pradesh. Apparently, economic reforms didn’t get you votes. The real India living in villages was angry at being left out. That was the lesson for politicians from 2004. Or, so we were told.Such broad narratives with minimal factual analysis backing them have flourished in the public policy space. There is no basis for them. The loss of NDA in 2004 came down to two states. Anti-incumbency in Andhra Pradesh where a resurgent Congress under YS Reddy beat TDP, a constituent of NDA. TDP lost by similar margins (in vote share %) across the state in all demographics in both rural and urban areas. There was no rural uprising against Naidu because of his tech-savvy, urban reformist image. Naidu lost because the other party ran a better campaign. Nothing else. The other mistake of the NDA was in choosing to partner with the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu (TN) over DMK. TN was famous for not giving split verdicts. It swung to extremes between these two parties in every election. And that’s what happened as AIADMK drew a blank.Yet, the false lesson of 2004 has played on the minds of politicians since. We haven’t gotten back on track on reforms in the true sense. 2005The Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force in 2005. The “right to X” model of governance took root.2006In March 2006, George W Bush visited India and signed the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with Manmohan Singh. From facing sanctions in 1998 for Pokhran 2 to the 123 Agreement, this was a victory for Indian diplomacy and its rising status in the world. You would think this would have had bipartisan support among the political class in India. Well, the Left that was part of UPA and the BJP that worked on the deal when it was in power, opposed it. Many shenanigans later, the deal was passed in the parliament in 2008. It is often said there’s no real ideological divide among parties in India. This view can be contested on various grounds. But events like the opposition to the nuclear deal make you wonder if there are genuine ideological positions on key policy issues in India. Many sound policy decisions are opposed merely for the sake of it. Ideology doesn’t figure anywhere. 2007It was the year when the Left parties were out-lefted. In Singur and Nandigram, protests erupted over land acquisition for industrial projects. The crucible of the resulting violence created a new political force. As for the investment, the capital took a flight to other places. The tax on capital ended up being a tax on labour. Businesses stayed away from West Bengal. The citadel of Left turned into its mausoleum.2008Puja Mehra in her book The Lost Decade traces the origin of India losing its way following the global financial crisis to the Mumbai terror attack of 2008. Shivraj Patil, the home minister, quit following the attack and Chidambaram was shifted from finance to fill in. For reasons unknown, Pranab Mukherjee, a politician steeped in the 70s-style-Indira-Gandhi socialism, was made the FM. Mehra makes a compelling case of how that one decision stalled reforms, increased deficit and led to runaway inflation over the next three years. Till Chidambaram was brought back to get the house in order, it was too late, and we were halfway into a lost decade. It is remarkable how bad policies always seem easy to implement while good policies take ages to get off the blocks.2009The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established in January 2009 to architect a unique digital identity for persons in a country where low rates of death and birth registrations made fake and duplicate identities a means for corruption and denial of service. Under the Modi government, the digital identity — Aadhaar — became the fulcrum of several government services. This project also set the stage for later projects such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Abha (Health ID).2010There’s petty corruption everywhere in India. It is pervasive. Not surprisingly, it is one political issue leading to mass movements in India. The anti-corruption mood gripped India in 2010 on the back of the 2G spectrum scam, where the chief accountant of the government claimed a notional loss of about Rs. 1.8 trillion to the exchequer. Auctioning of natural resources wasn’t exactly a transparent process then. It was evident there was a scam in the allotment of the 2G spectrum. But the 1.8 trillion number was a wild exaggeration that anyone with a semblance of business understanding could see through. It didn’t matter. That number caught the imagination. UPA 2 never recovered from it. More importantly, the auction policy for resources was distorted forever. We still suffer the consequences.The 2010s: Missed Opportunity2011India’s last case of wild poliovirus was detected in 2011. Until about the early 1990s, an average of 500 to 1000 children got paralysed daily in India. The original target for eradication was the year 2000. Nevertheless, we got there eleven years later. India’s pulse polio campaign has since become a source of confidence for public policy execution in India. We internalised the lesson that the Indian government can sometimes deliver through mission mode projects. 2012If you cannot solve a vexing public policy issue, turn it into a Right. It won’t work, but it will seem like you’ve done everything. After years of trying to get the national education policy right, the government decided it was best to make education a fundamental right in the Constitution. Maybe that will make the problem go away. A decade later, nothing has changed, but we have an additional right to feel good about.2013This year saw the emergence of AAP as a political force via the anti-corruption movement. AAP combines the classic elements of what makes a political party successful in India - statist instincts, focus on aam aadmi issues, populism and ideological flexibility. Importantly, it is good at telling its own version of some future utopia rather than questioning the utopia of others. 2014The BJP came to power with many promises; the most alluring of them was ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. Over the past eight years it has claimed success in meeting many of its promises, but even its ardent supporters won’t claim any success on minimum government. In fact, it has gone the other way. That a party with an immensely popular PM, election machinery that rivals the best in the world, and virtually no opposition cannot shake us off our instinctive belief in the State's power never ceases to surprise us.2015The murder of a person by a mob on the charges of eating beef was the first clear indication of the upsurge of a new violent, majoritarian polity. It was also one of the early incidents in India of radically networked communities using social media for self-organisation. Meanwhile, 2015 also witnessed the signing of a landmark boundary agreement between India and Bangladesh, which ended the abomination called the third-order enclave. The two States exchanged land peacefully, upholding the principle that citizen well-being trumps hardline interpretations of territorial integrity. 2016There will be many case studies written in future about demonetisation. Each one of them will end with a single conclusion. Public policy requires discussion and consensus, not stealth and surprise. We hope we have learnt our lesson from it.2017Until 2017, many in India still held the hope of a modus vivendi with China. Some others were enamoured by the Chinese model of governance. However, the Doklam crisis in 2017, and the Galwan clashes in 2020, changed all that. Through this miscalculation, China alienated a full generation of Indians, led to better India-US relations, and energised India to shift focus away from merely managing a weak Pakistan, and toward raising its game for competing with a stronger adversary. For this reason, we wrote a thank you note to Xi Jinping here. 2018It took years of efforts by the LGBTQ community to get Section 377 scrapped. In 2018, they partially won when the Supreme Court diluted Section 377 to exclude all kinds of adult consensual sexual behaviour. The community could now claim equal constitutional status as others. There’s still some distance to go for the State to acknowledge non-heterosexual unions and provide for other civil rights to the community. But the gradual acceptance of the community because of decriminalisation is a sign that our society doesn’t need moral policing or lectures to judge what’s good for it.2019The J&K Reorganisation Act changed the long-standing political status quo in Kashmir. Three years on, the return to political normalcy and full statehood still awaits. While a response by Pakistan was expected, it was China that fomented trouble in Ladakh, leading to the border clashes in 2020. 2020We have written multiple pieces on farm laws in the past year. The repeal of these laws, which were fundamentally sound because of a vocal minority, is the story of public policy in India. Good policies are scuttled because of the absence of consultation, an unclear narrative, opportunistic politicking or plain old hubris. We write this newsletter in the hope of changing this. 2021The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic left behind many bereaved families. People are still trying to pick up the pieces. The sadness was also interrupted by frustration because of the delays in getting the vaccination programme going. India benefited immensely from domestic vaccine manufacturing capability in the private sector. Despite many twists and turns in vaccine pricing and procurements, the year ended with over 1 billion administered doses. In challenging times, the Indian State, markets, and society did come together to fight the pandemic. So, here we are. In the 75th independent year of this beautiful, fascinating and often exasperating nation. We are a work in progress. We might walk slowly, but we must not walk backwards. May we all live in a happy, prosperous and equal society. Thanks for reading Anticipating the Unintended! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

SPEAKERSagarika Ghose has been a journalist for over three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She has been a primetime news anchor and has also worked as Consulting Editor, The Times Of India. She is also a political commentator on the news channel ET Now. Ghose is the author of the best selling biography of Indira Gandhi, "Indira, India's Most Powerful Prime Minister." She is the author of the recently published theoretical work, “Why I Am A Liberal”Explore More at - www.argumentativeindians.comDISCLAIMER:We invite thought leaders from across the ideological spectrum. The guests in our sessions express their independent views and opinions. Argumentative Indians does not profess to subscribe, agree or endorse the same or be in anyway responsible for the stance, words and comments of our guests.

Marking the 42nd founding day of the BJP, in episode 974 of #CutTheClutter, Shekhar Gupta looks at the trajectory of the party since its inception-- under various leaders. And five reasons that were core to party's rise.  Brought to you by @KiaInd

VP Singh, LK Advani, Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee, and UPA govts all failed to recognise the pain of Kashmiri Pandits. Now The Kashmir Files is rectifying that. ----more---- https://theprint.in/opinion/vajpayee-advani-to-upa-the-kashmir-files-acknowledges-a-tragedy-no-one-wanted-to-talk-about/885006/

Muslim vote can make the Samajwadi Party principal opposition force in UP. But to win, it has to build better rapport with the other backward castes and SCs. ----more---- https://theprint.in/opinion/five-takeaways-from-up-modis-better-than-vajpayee-and-congress-wasted-trump-card-priyanka/867951/

TOI's Vaibhav Purandare speaks with senior journalist Sagarika Ghose on why she decided to write a biography of AB Vajpayee, and his relationship with Advani and RSS

"Vajpayee was a ruthless politician but he couldn't do with Modi what he did with others like Madhok and Govindacharya," says @sagarikaghose, author of 'Atal Bihari Vajpayee'. She talks to @utterflea about the first BJP Prime Minister's humour, likeability, unconventionality and great belief in Parliament on this week's Books& Authors podcast

Vajpayee was flawed, weak in many ways, and played cynical politics but he never stopped trying to reconcile diverse groups. ----more---- https://theprint.in/opinion/why-a-liberal-indian-needed-to-write-atal-bihari-vajpayees-biography/793027/

Former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on 25 December 1924. On his 97th birth anniversary, Sydney-based music composer and poet Abbas Raza Alvi reminisces his meetings with Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, and Bharatiya Janata Party's stalwart. Mr Alvi had composed Mr Vajpayee's six poems into a music album 'Sandesh' a few years ago.

With the successful sale of Air India to the Tata group, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has restarted the country's long-stalled privatisation programme, which had been kicked off by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in the late 1990s. With several high-profile privatisation deals lined up, including the sale of Bharat Petroleum, can Modi replicate Vajpayee's success?  *** The monetary policy report of the Reserve Bank of India has pegged economic growth at 7.8% for the next financial year, assuming normal monsoon and full vaccination against the Covid-19 virus. What were the 10 most important takeaways from the report? *** How prepared is the mobile device ecosystem for the 5G technology, which is expected to be rolled out by next year? Will we again see the stutters that we had seen at the time of 4G? Will the prices come down in the sub-Rs 10,000 handset segment? When will India's semiconductor chip shortage end? And is India ready to have its own fab ecosystem? Qualcomm VP and President for India and SAARC, Rajen Vagadia, answered all these questions in an exclusive interview with Business Standard's Surajeet Das Gupta. *** With the RBI policy behind us, markets will shift their focus towards corporate earnings and macroeconomic data during this holiday truncated week. What are the key triggers for the week and what are tech charts suggesting for the markets?  *** The Employees' Provident Fund, or EPF, has traditionally been the most common tool for most Indians, especially the salaried class, to save for their retirement corpus. But what is provident fund?  *** Listen to these and more in today's Business Standard Morning Show podcast.

The long-awaited sale of India's national carrier Air India is now done. The Tata group has snapped up the loss-making airline four years after the government announced its intention to sell it. Air India is now back to the Tata stable, 68 years after the government nationalised it.  Tata Sons' enterprise value bid of Rs 18,000 crore with a cash component of Rs 2,700 crore was higher than the offer from a consortium led by SpiceJet Chairman Ajay Singh.  The acquisition gives the Tatas 141 planes and 900 slots at overseas airports, the most valuable of which are at London's Heathrow airport. While this is the end of a long wait for the Tatas, it also marks the start of Narendra Modi's challenging privatisation drive seven years after he first took office. The United Progressive Alliance government led by Manmohan Singh had not done any privatisation in its 10-year rule. Modi is looking to carry on the legacy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has a formidable track record of selling several state-run companies between 1999 and 2004.   Before we dive into PM Modi's plans, let us first see how public-sector enterprises privatised by the Vajpayee government have fared. The NDA government under Vajpayee managed to sell as many as 12 PSUs, despite strong opposition from within the government and the bureaucracy. A separate Ministry of Disinvestment under Arun Shourie had gone ahead with privatisation in the face of opposition from the Bharatiya Janata Party's ideological parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS, and its various wings. These PSUs were: Modern Foods Maruti Udyog  Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO) CMC  Hindustan Teleprinters Hindustan Zinc Indian Petrochemicals Jessop and Co  Lagan Jute Machinery Paradeep Phosphates  Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) These companies have performed significantly well since moving into private hands. Iconic bread manufacturer Modern Foods was the first company to be privatised and it was sold to Hindustan Unilever in 2000. In April 2016, the FMCG company changed hands again when Everstone Capital acquired it from Hindustan Unilever. And in February this year, it was again sold to the world's largest baking company, Mexico's Grupo Bimbo. It has a 35% share of India's bread market and a revenue of Rs 400 crore. Among the big names, Hindustan Zinc was sold to Anil Agarwal's Vedanta. Since its sale in 2002, Hindustan Zinc has increased its annual profits from just Rs 69 crore to Rs 8,000 crore in FY21. The central government still holds a 29.5% stake in Hindustan Zinc which is now worth Rs 40,000 crore.  Maruti Udyog, which was renamed Maruti Suzuki India after its sale to Japan's Suzuki Motor Corporation, today is India's biggest carmaker, with a 50% share of the market. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, which was sold to the Tata group and later renamed Tata Communications, has more than doubled its annual revenue to Rs 17,000 crore since its privatisation. Hardware maintenance company CMC was also purchased by Tata Sons in 2001 and was merged with India's largest software services company TCS in 2015. Fertilizer company Paradeep Phosphates got sold to Saroj Poddar's Adventz Group. Today, it boasts an annual revenue of Rs 5,000 crore. Indian Petrochemicals was bought by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries. Coming back to PM Modi's privatisation road map, his government aims to sell more than two dozen public sector enterprises.  Some of the big-ticket sales include Bharat Petroleum, Shipping Corporation of India, Container Corporation of India and HLL Lifecare. Apart from this, six steel plants are also listed for sale, including Neelachal Ispat Nigam, Durgapur Steel Plant, Salem Steel Plant and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam, also known as Vizag Steel.  For its 52.98% stake in Bharat Petroleum, worth Rs 49,000 crore, the government has contenders in mining conglomerate Vedanta and global funds Apollo and I Squared Cap

This Episode contains an important poem of Bharat Ratna Atal Behari Vajpayee titled"Zindagi" written in Hindi. It speaks how a leader or a headman has to stand alone and smilingly do his duties. He may have pain, as he has to be away from hustle and bustle of life. Away from his own people. He may have pain but has to serve smilingly. Yes- I have translated this poem. Please enjoy.. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Friends i will going to share the political journey of Indian former prime minister shree atal bihari Vajpayee..he is the best politican of India..I hope u must like this story

Fireside Livestream with the former Finance Minister of India and (till 2018) senior BJP Leader. #YashwantSinha has watch BJP Governments in power - both past & present and had a deep sense of where the economy and the country is going. In this Deshbhakt Raw conversation - Sinha draws sharp parallels between the BJP under Vajpayee and BJP under Modi. Also included questions from Deshbhakt Members only. *** Unlock MEMBER ONLY - Discord / Chats / Content PATREON - https://www.patreon.com/thedeshbhakt YOUTUBE - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTM_hPCeckqN3cPWtYZZcg/join MERCH - https://kadakmerch.com/thedeshbhakt *** SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US *** YouTube: - https://youtube.com/thedeshbhakt Twitter :- https://twitter.com/thedeshbhakt Web - https://thedeshbhakt.in/ Instagram :- https://instagram.com/akashbanerjee.in Facebook :- https://www.facebook.com/akashbanerjee.in Podcast - https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt Chapter Heads : 00:00 - Ex FM on #DeshbhaktRaw Conversations. 01:30 - Is Mr. Singha an Andolanjeevi? 06:00 - Why a weak opposition is the best insurance policy for Modi 07:45 - The Old BJP vs New BJP 11:00 - The phenomenon of a One Man Party! 17:10 - "Sarkar ki niyat par logo ko shak hota hai" 22:08 - "$5 Trillion economy" talk is a total bakwas 23:25 - "Corona a blessing for the govt." 28:15 - An international conspiracy against India? 30:43 - Atal ji and his India 32:00 - Mile surr mera tumhara tweets! 35:30 - Where are we heading as a nation? 38:00 - The last hope! 41:44 - The biggest challenge **More DeshBhakt Videos** The Deshbhakt Episodes: https://bit.ly/3eLgvLv INDIA IN EMERGENCY: https://bit.ly/3dM4Bj8 Bhakt Banerjee Rocks: https://bit.ly/2VuFQlf B&D Media and the Public: https://bit.ly/389jjzw Akash-Vaani: https://bit.ly/3eKvN3h ** Credits ** Host : Akash Producer : Avishrant --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/support

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Following the central government announcing the 2021 Budget Monday, Shekhar Gupta tells you about its features and benefits, its emphasis on growth, and how it harkens back to the 1991 reforms and the reformist face of the early 2000s Vajpayee government, in episode 673 of #CutTheClutter

In contrast to the outgoing Trump Administration, there are disturbing signs that the new Biden Administration in the US will revert to the unsuccessful appeasement strategy of eight years of the earlier Obama presidency. While Barack Obama pontificated, looked professorial and twiddled his thumbs, China essentially captured the South China Sea. Given a Biden administration full of rehabilitated Obama-era relics, it is likely China will feel emboldened.A signal indication of this likely U-turn was the fact that the very word “Indo-Pacific” was omitted by Biden in a major policy speech, reverting to the old and tired “Asia Pacific”. This was duly noted by the Chinese mouthpiece Global Times, and surely seen as a dog-whistle by Beijing’s America-watchers.The consequences of abetting Chinese hubris are unclear at the moment, but a forced annexation of Taiwan is certainly not off the table. Nor is a physical invasion of Japan’s Senkaku islands. And a massive Himalayan attack on India in Ladakh or anywhere along the Line of Actual Control is entirely possible. It is in this context that a series of moves by incumbent Foreign Secretary Mike Pompeo needs to be evaluated. The fact is that, despite what the usual suspects say, there have been significant wins in Trump’s foreign policy. Just three: unlike his predecessors, he didn’t go to war; Israel has signed peace agreements with several neighbors; and he pushed back, hard, against China. One could legitimately question the downsides of exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris accord on climate change, or the Iran nuclear treaty; but none of them is an unequivocal error. And one could suggest that by pushing back on European allies, Trump has forced them to be more responsible. The hard line against China, however, is the most important, and it is tempting to think that there is a bipartisan consensus in the US that China has become Enemy No. 1, no ifs, thens and buts. But if you consider the Obama legacy (for example, an ex-aide at UC San Diego is practically a spokesperson for China), and how many of them are in the Biden Administration, there is reason to worry.There is, for example, with John Kerry back in the Cabinet, the possibility that, in the zeal to get back in the good graces of the global-warming mafiosi, Biden will bend over backwards to appease China. I would be saddened, but not amazed if he even accepts the 9-dash line in the South China Sea as China’s territorial waters!The 9-dash line, for which China makes highly dubious ‘historical’ claims using some old maps, in effect suggests that the entire South China Sea belongs to China. In reality, there has been no time in history when China dominated that sea, and it is a major economic lifeline, as a great deal of gloabal trade passes through it via the Straits of Malacca. The rest of the world cannot sit by and allow China to deny FON (freedom of navigation) in these open seas. Thus the importance of the single-minded steps taken by Pompeo. For instance, he recently said the following regarding the Wuhan Virus (aka COVID-19):Wuhan Virus: CCP covered it up. CCP disappeared the doctors who knew. CCP still refuses to let the world in to see what it wrought. CCP lied about where the virus came from. CCP closed travel inside China and allowed the world to suffer. America invents vaccines for the world. Every human being can see this contrast.This was followed up by a fact sheet from the US State Department that squarely puts the blame for the virus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, brushing aside the usual obfuscation about the “wet market” and so on:(https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/). It stops just short of directly accusing the lab of having engineered the virus. The charade continues, however. A belated WHO fact-finding team found obstacles placed in its way, according to a January 5 report by CNN. The World Health Organization said that China has blocked the arrival of a team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in a rare rebuke from the UN agency.On Taiwan, Pompeo, without necessarily violating the US’ long-standing “One China Policy”, eased restrictions on contacts between Taiwanese officials and American diplomats. That is only fair because China has a history of not abiding by the treaties or agreements it has signed, for instance the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). When the binding court of arbitration ruled in 2015 that China had violated the Philippines’ territorial integrity in the Scarborough Shoal, China simply ignored it. The arbitrator also found no merit to China’s ‘historical’ claim, based on some doubtful old maps, to the infamous “9-dash line” as its territorial boundary (which means almost the entire South China Sea). This too was ignored. Unilateral adherence by other signatories to treaties China signed is pointless, because China does not live up to its obligations: another instance is India’s concession by Vajpayee on Tibet. A good case can be made for India to abandon its own “One China” policy, considering China has no obvious “One India” policy: the latter interferes in J&K, questions Sikkim, and of course squats on Aksai Chin. There have been several other strong indications of US displeasure with China on human rights issues and trade, including over human rights violations in Chinese-occupied Tibet (CoT). Sanctions have been slapped on exports of Chinese-occupied Xinjiang (CoX) products such as cotton, based on systematic allegations of slave labor, forced sterilization, and denial of religious freedoms to Uighurs. The latest is the strong and unusually blunt statement on January 19th — that is, the very last day of the Trump administration — from the State Department accusing China of genocide. “I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement, adding that Chinese officials were “engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group.”The January 5 crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong against Chinese usurpation of democratic rights in that territory had also attracted Pompeo’s wrath.But the strategic South China Sea probably remains the most contentious issue, as Beijing builds up its military muscle and treats the sea as its inland lake, threatening freedom of navigation. It has long been obvious that China will attempt serious mischief. I said the following as far back as 1998 in “The Danger from China” https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/15rajeev.htm:China is attempting to establish the South China Sea (the name has 'China' in it and so it must be China's private lake, you see) and its potential mineral (natural gas and oil deposits) as its own private property. The activities around the Spratly Islands, Mischief Reef, the Paracel Islands etc are well-known -- China simply walked in and grabbed these, paying no attention to prior Vietnamese, Malaysian, Taiwanese and Filipino claims, for instance.Thus the welcome decision by Pompeo on January 15th to impose travel bans and trade sanctions on violators. Says the report from the AP, reprinted in The Hindu:In its waning days, the Trump administration put in place travel bans on an unspecified number of Chinese officials and their families for what it said were violations of international standards regarding the freedom of navigation in those waters.The administration also said it was adding China’s state oil company, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, to a list of companies with which U.S. citizens are banned from doing business…“The United States stands with Southeast Asian claimant states seeking to defend their sovereign rights and interests, consistent with international law,” Mr. Pompeo said.“We will continue to act until we see Beijing cease its coercive behaviour in the South China Sea.” This is as much a warning to China to behave as it is to the Biden administration to not attempt grandstanding and appeasement. After all, we are still experiencing massive human suffering and economic loss wrought by the Chinese-origin virus. There is a limit to how much forbearance the rest of the world can muster. I did go further in my 1998 predictions about Chinese misbehavior. Obviously I got the dates wrong, but my concerns may not be that far off the mark.My forecast is that, if unchecked, there will be continued Chinese military adventurism in Asia. I predict that by 2003, the Chinese will cross the Ussuri River and attack Russian Siberia, citing flimsy historical claims; impoverished Russians will have no way of defending themselves.Further, I suspect China will either threaten to, or actually conduct, an atmospheric nuclear blast over Japan by 2005, with the clear threat of frying all their transistors -- and thus infrastructure -- with an electromagnetic pulse. America will stand by, powerless, and its nuclear umbrella for Japan will turn out to be a fiction.China will almost definitely attack Taiwan by 2002; I wonder if it makes sense for India to befriend Taiwan, and perhaps even offer it certain nuclear components, including blueprints and enriched uranium, returning China's favour vis a vis Pakistan. The chances of China attacking India over Arunachal Pradesh have perhaps receded a little after India's clear indication that it will deploy nuclear missiles. The Chinese understand belligerence -- they practice it and respect it.I am no expert at global strategy, so I am quoting people who are: Caspar Weinberger, formerly US secretary of state, projected the Taiwan scenario to happen in 1998; the Economist suggests the Japan scenario. Well, okay, I made up the Siberia scenario myself: it stands to reason.As a confirmed China-hawk, I predicted doom:A couple of years ago, I read a review of a hugely successful Taiwanese book called Yellow Peril, in which a series of altercations between Taiwan and China end up in a few nuclear bombs being exchanged. I think the PRC attacks Taiwan, which retaliates with an atom bomb; Russian and American nukes enter the picture somehow. The final scene is yet another sorry exodus of Chinese -- by boat towards Australia, and by land over the Silk Road towards Central Asia. In the end, that is the issue, isn't it -- lebensraum?I really hope that Chinese belligerence does not lead to such a scenario. Even though China has come a long way economically and militarily, it shouldn’t overplay its hand. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

Former prime minister of India and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an understated and a singular politician of the kind rarely seen in contemporary times. His patriotism was uncompromising, forged out of the paradoxes of his life: The sensitive poet who summoned nerves of Steel to conduct the Pokhran-ii nuclear tests; the man from humble beginnings who envisioned a project as Titanic as the Golden quadrilateral highway network. Devoid of any political pedigree or patronage, he harnessed his diplomatic acumen to transform India's relations with the United States, which had long been mired in misunderstandings rooted in the Cold War. His calculated decisions led to key strategic and economic policy achievements. in this book, Shakti Sinha, a close Associate of Vajpayee, helps us understand Vajpayee as a decision-maker. The narrative focuses on the political challenges Vajpayee faced, and on his key initiatives in the strategic and economic fields during his first Term as prime Minister, which have had a lasting impact. 'Vajpayee' fleshes out not only Vajpayee's political philosophy but also provides an insider's account of how the former PM thought and worked. In this episode, we will be discussing the book "Vajpayee: The Years That Changed India" with the author, Shakti Sinha. This episode will be hosted by Srivatsa Subbanna and Rajeev Mantri and will also include an audience Q&A.

Former prime minister of India and member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an understated and a singular politician of the kind rarely seen in contemporary times. His patriotism was uncompromising, forged out of the paradoxes of his life: The sensitive poet who summoned nerves of Steel to conduct the Pokhran-ii nuclear tests; the man from humble beginnings who envisioned a project as Titanic as the Golden quadrilateral highway network. Devoid of any political pedigree or patronage, he harnessed his diplomatic acumen to transform India's relations with the United States, which had long been mired in misunderstandings rooted in the Cold War. His calculated decisions led to key strategic and economic policy achievements. in this book, Shakti Sinha, a close Associate of Vajpayee, helps us understand Vajpayee as a decision-maker. The narrative focuses on the political challenges Vajpayee faced, and on his key initiatives in the strategic and economic fields during his first Term as prime Minister, which have had a lasting impact. 'Vajpayee' fleshes out not only Vajpayee's political philosophy but also provides an insider's account of how the former PM thought and worked. In this episode, we will be discussing the book "Vajpayee: The Years That Changed India" with the author, Shakti Sinha. This episode will be hosted by Srivatsa Subbanna and Rajeev Mantri and will also include an audience Q&A.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian statesman who served three terms as the Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was the first Indian prime minister not of the Indian National Congress to serve a full term in office. He was also noted as a poet and a writer. He was a member of the Indian Parliament for over five decades, having been elected ten times to the Lok Sabha, the lower house, and twice to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. He served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, retiring from active politics in 2009. He was among the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), of which he was president from 1968 to 1972. The BJS merged with several other parties to form the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general election. In March 1977, Vajpayee became the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. He resigned in 1979, and the Janata alliance collapsed soon after. Former members of the BJS formed the BJP in 1980, with Vajpayee its first president. During his tenure as prime minister, India carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. Vajpayee sought to improve diplomatic relations with Pakistan, travelling to Lahore by bus to meet with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan, he sought to restore relations through engagement with President Pervez Musharraf, inviting him to India for a summit at Agra. The administration of Narendra Modi declared in 2014 that Vajpayee's birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day. In 2015, he was conferred India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. He died on 16 August 2018 of age-related illness.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian statesman who served three terms as the Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he was the first Indian prime minister not of the Indian National Congress to serve a full term in office. He was also noted as a poet and a writer. He was a member of the Indian Parliament for over five decades, having been elected ten times to the Lok Sabha, the lower house, and twice to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. He served as the Member of Parliament for Lucknow, retiring from active politics in 2009. He was among the founding members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), of which he was president from 1968 to 1972. The BJS merged with several other parties to form the Janata Party, which won the 1977 general election. In March 1977, Vajpayee became the Minister of External Affairs in the cabinet of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. He resigned in 1979, and the Janata alliance collapsed soon after. Former members of the BJS formed the BJP in 1980, with Vajpayee its first president. During his tenure as prime minister, India carried out the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. Vajpayee sought to improve diplomatic relations with Pakistan, travelling to Lahore by bus to meet with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan, he sought to restore relations through engagement with President Pervez Musharraf, inviting him to India for a summit at Agra. The administration of Narendra Modi declared in 2014 that Vajpayee's birthday, 25 December, would be marked as Good Governance Day. In 2015, he was conferred India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. He died on 16 August 2018 of age-related illness.

Political scientist, lawyer and journalist Vinay Sitapati speaks to entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal on his book Jugalbandi. Narendra Modi has been a hundred years in the making. Vinay Sitapati’s Jugalbandi provides this backstory to his current dominance in Indian politics. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s, moves on to the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1980, and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004. And it follows this journey through the entangled lives of its founding jugalbandi: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Over their six-decade-long relationship, Vajpayee and Advani worked as a team despite differences in personality and beliefs. What kept them together was fraternal love and professional synergy, of course, but also, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity. Their partnership explains what the BJP before Modi was, and why it won. In supporting roles are a cast of characters-from the warden’s wife who made room for Vajpayee in her family to the billionaire grandson of Pakistan’s founder who happened to be a major early funder of the BJP. Based on private papers, party documents, newspapers and over two hundred interviews, this is a must-read for those interested in the ideology that now rules India. This episode is an edited version of a live conversation on BIC Streams. 

NUGGET CONTEXT Vinay speaks about the many layers of Vajpayee and how he had several contradictions within. He goes on to speak about great leaders and how we have to study them in a non-linear fashion for us to make sense of them. GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transition Insight Private Limited (TIPL). Deepak Jayaraman and TIPL do not have any political affiliations or associations of any sort and this conversation is intended to be a non-partisan interaction. Published in Dec 2020. HOST Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman OTHER GUESTS 1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith 65. Ashish Dhawan DISCLAIMER All content and opinions expressed in the podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman and Transition Insight Private Limited. Views expressed in comments to blog are the personal opinions of the author of the comment. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Company or the author of the blog. Participants are responsible for the content of their comments and all comments that are posted are in the public domain. The Company reserves the right to monitor, edit, and/or publish any submitted comments. Not all comments may be published. Any third-party comments published are third party information and The Company takes no responsibility and disclaims all liability. The Company reserves the right, but is not obligated to monitor and delete any comments or postings at any time without notice.

NUGGET CONTEXT Vinay puts the Vajpayee – Advani relationship in perspective. He speaks about how they had two occasions where the power equation flipped completely. He shares other examples to illustrate how special this dynamic is when you compare it to most other relationships at the top across disciplines. GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transition Insight Private Limited (TIPL). Deepak Jayaraman and TIPL do not have any political affiliations or associations of any sort and this conversation is intended to be a non-partisan interaction. Published in Dec 2020. HOST Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman OTHER GUESTS 1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith 65. Ashish Dhawan DISCLAIMER All content and opinions expressed in the podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman and Transition Insight Private Limited. Views expressed in comments to blog are the personal opinions of the author of the comment. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Company or the author of the blog. Participants are responsible for the content of their comments and all comments that are posted are in the public domain. The Company reserves the right to monitor, edit, and/or publish any submitted comments. Not all comments may be published. Any third-party comments published are third party information and The Company takes no responsibility and disclaims all liability. The Company reserves the right, but is not obligated to monitor and delete any comments or postings at any time without notice.

NUGGET CONTEXT Vinay speaks about some of the nuances involved in the way Advani and Vajpayee handled their personal and professional relationship. He speaks about how they often put the Hindu Nationalist agenda (as cultivated given their formative years in the RSS) might have acted as a glue that might have held them together over the long term despite their differences. GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transition Insight Private Limited (TIPL). Deepak Jayaraman and TIPL do not have any political affiliations or associations of any sort and this conversation is intended to be a non-partisan interaction. Published in Dec 2020. HOST Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman OTHER GUESTS 1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith 65. Ashish Dhawan DISCLAIMER All content and opinions expressed in the podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman and Transition Insight Private Limited. Views expressed in comments to blog are the personal opinions of the author of the comment. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Company or the author of the blog. Participants are responsible for the content of their comments and all comments that are posted are in the public domain. The Company reserves the right to monitor, edit, and/or publish any submitted comments. Not all comments may be published. Any third-party comments published are third party information and The Company takes no responsibility and disclaims all liability. The Company reserves the right, but is not obligated to monitor and delete any comments or postings at any time without notice.

NUGGET CONTEXT Vinay speaks about how tactful politicians like Vajpayee understand the notion of an “Overton Window”, a skill that CEOs need more and more as the levels of complexity compound in the world we live in. GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transition Insight Private Limited (TIPL). Deepak Jayaraman and TIPL do not have any political affiliations or associations of any sort and this conversation is intended to be a non-partisan interaction. Published in Dec 2020. HOST Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman OTHER GUESTS 1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith 65. Ashish Dhawan DISCLAIMER All content and opinions expressed in the podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman and Transition Insight Private Limited. Views expressed in comments to blog are the personal opinions of the author of the comment. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Company or the author of the blog. Participants are responsible for the content of their comments and all comments that are posted are in the public domain. The Company reserves the right to monitor, edit, and/or publish any submitted comments. Not all comments may be published. Any third-party comments published are third party information and The Company takes no responsibility and disclaims all liability. The Company reserves the right, but is not obligated to monitor and delete any comments or postings at any time without notice.

NUGGET CONTEXT Vinay speaks about how the two phases of transition played out when the power shifted between Vajpayee and Advani. He speaks about the how the transitions were not sudden and how the two leaders handled themselves in the situation. GUEST Vinay Sitapati returns to the Play to Potential Podcast on the back of his recently published book - Jugalbandi - The BJP before Modi. The book begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism as a response to British-induced elections in the 1920s and moves on to the formation of the BJP in 1980 and ends with its first national government, from 1998 to 2004.  The book also traces the entangled lives of its founding leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Vinay digs into various moments to really understand what made their six decade relationship tick. He teases out the secret recipe behind their cohesiveness despite twists and turns in their respective fortunes. He says that what kept them together was fraternal love, professional synergy and, above all, an ideology that stressed on unity.  This podcast is for information and learning purposes only. All content and opinions expressed in this podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman or Transition Insight Private Limited (TIPL). Deepak Jayaraman and TIPL do not have any political affiliations or associations of any sort and this conversation is intended to be a non-partisan interaction. Published in Dec 2020. HOST Deepak is a Leadership Advisor and an Executive Coach. He works with leaders to improve their effectiveness and in helping them make better decisions specifically around organizational and career transitions. He currently runs Transition Insight (www.transitioninsight.com) and works with leaders to handle phases of transition thoughtfully. He has worked as an Operations Consultant with KPMG in UK, Strategy Consultant with McKinsey in the US and as a Leadership Consultant with EgonZehnder (a Swiss Leadership Advisory firm) where he helped companies recruit CEOs, CXOs and Board Members and worked on Leadership Development. Deepak is a certified CEO Coach and is an alumnus of IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad and London Business School. His detailed profile can be found at https://in.linkedin.com/in/djayaraman OTHER GUESTS 1.Vijay Amritraj 2.Amish Tripathi 3.Raghu Raman 4.Papa CJ 5.Kartik Hosanagar 6.Ravi Venkatesan 7.Abhijit Bhaduri 8.Viren Rasquinha 9.Prakash Iyer 10.Avnish Bajaj 11.Nandan Nilekani 12.Atul Kasbekar 13.Karthik Reddy 14.Pramath Sinha 15.Vedika Bhandarkar 16.Vinita Bali 17.Zia Mody 18.Rama Bijapurkar 19.Dheeraj Pandey 20.Anu Madgavkar 21.Vishy Anand 22. Meher Pudumjee 23.KV Shridhar (Pops) 24.Suresh Naraynan 25.Devdutt Pattanaik 26.Jay Panda 27.Amit Chandra 28.Chandramouli Venkatesan 29.Roopa Kudva 30.Vinay Sitapati 31.Neera Nundy. 32.Deepa Malik 33.Bombay Jayashri. 34.Arun Maira 35.Ambi Parameswaran 36.OP Bhaat 37.Indranil Chakraborty 38.Tarun Khanna 39. Ramachandra Guha 40. Stewart Friedman 41. Rich Fernandez 42. Falguni Nayar 43. Rajat Gupta 44. Kartik Hosanagar 45. Michael Watkins 46. Matt Dixon 47. Herminia Ibarra 48. Paddy Upton 49. Tasha Eurich 50. Alan Eagle 51. Sudhir Sitapati 52. James Clear 53. Lynda Gratton 54. Jennifer Petriglieri. 55. Matthew Walker 56. Raj Raghunathan 57. Jennifer Garvey Berger 58. BJ Fogg 59. R Gopolakrishnan 60. Sir Andrew Likierman. 61. Atul Khatri 62. Whitney Jonson 63. Venkat Krishnan 64. Marshall Goldsmith 65. Ashish Dhawan DISCLAIMER All content and opinions expressed in the podcast are that of the guests and are not necessarily the opinions of Deepak Jayaraman and Transition Insight Private Limited. Views expressed in comments to blog are the personal opinions of the author of the comment. They do not necessarily reflect the views of The Company or the author of the blog. Participants are responsible for the content of their comments and all comments that are posted are in the public domain. The Company reserves the right to monitor, edit, and/or publish any submitted comments. Not all comments may be published. Any third-party comments published are third party information and The Company takes no responsibility and disclaims all liability. The Company reserves the right, but is not obligated to monitor and delete any comments or postings at any time without notice.

On this episode, we speak to Vinay Sitapati about his new book Jugalbandi that takes us back to the beginning of the BJP and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani leadership. Did they hate each other and who was the woman Vajpayee defied the RSS for?

On this episode of "Uncle, Please Sit!", Joel and Tushar are joined again by Anupam Manur, Assistant Professor at the Takshila Institute, to continue their conversation on the Indian economy. In the first part of this discussion, the panel explored the guiding philosophies of the Nehruvian years, Indira Gandhi's hard turn towards socialism, and years leading up to the balance of payments crisis. This second part sheds light on Manmohan Singh's big bang budget, the Vajpayee years, the UPA-1 boom, the post-2008 years, and the big events of the Modi era. Click through to check out the episode!You can follow Anupam on Twitter: @anupammanur (https://twitter.com/anupammanur)Get in touch with our hosts on their social media:Tushar Abhichandani on Twitter and Instagram:@YawnOkPlease (https://twitter.com/YawnOkPlease)@tushar_abhi (https://www.instagram.com/tushar_abhi/)Joel Pereira on Twitter and Instagram:@pereirajoel (https://twitter.com/pereirajoel)@joelpereira.esq (https://www.instagram.com/joelpereira.esq/)You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app.You can check out our website at http://www.ivmpodcasts.com

Omar Abdullah has served as the chief minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, as a member of parliament, and as India’s junior foreign minister. He spent months in detention after the Narendra Modi government stripped Jammu and Kashmir of the last vestiges of its autonomy and split it into two territories ruled directly by New Delhi.Over a year on, Abdullah speaks with Abhinandan Sekhri about the situation in Kashmir, and where he and his party, the National Conference, stand in the new scheme of things. Watch the full video on newslaundry.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Oldest ally of the BJP, the Shiromani Akali Dal has exited from the NDA, in the footsteps of the Shiv Sena. In episode 578 of Cut The Clutter, Shekhar Gupta underlines the big fundamental shift it marks in national politics. Also, a word on Vajpayee era BJP stalwart Jaswant Singh.

Podcast with renowned Poet, Novelist , Translator - Mr Udayan Vajpayee. Here we talked about - 1. Idea of art, pain, suffering and psychedelic drugs. 2. What is honesty of the artist. 3. What is parameter to judge any art work 4. Why literature and art is important. Support my work and help me to continue this podcast. Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Anuragminus Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/anuragminusverma

Amid the ongoing Ladakh disengagement along the LAC, a look at how an India-China ‘package deal’ for border settlement has been elusive. From the era of Nehru to Vajpayee to now. Also, a story of a fascinating character who secured Tawang & those few magnificent men of Indian Frontier Administrative Service. Shekhar Gupta with episode 518 of ThePrint's #CutTheClutter.Correction: At 1:23, it is LAC. The error is regretted.

*Correction in the opening message: It is 15th June and not 18th June.*Correction 2: The letter was from A. B. Vajpayee and not George FernandesLink to the letter: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/13/world/nuclear-anxiety-indian-s-letter-to-clinton-on-the-nuclear-testing.htmlDr. Avinash Godbole is an Assitant Professor of International Relations and China Studies at JSLH, JGU. He focuses on China's Foreign Policy and Asia Strategy, the Party Studies, China's Minority Policies, and Energy and Environment policies. He has written extensively on these issues in Academic and Media publications. Previously he worked with ICWA and before that with IDSA. He is also a Visiting Faculty at the Naval War College, Goa. 1.India China Relationship 2.Rajiv Gandhi's 1988 visit to China and the aftermath of the same 3.When did China became Nationalistic? 4.The century of Humiliation 5.Why Nationalism matters in China? 6.What is the narrative they give about the great leap forward? 7.Is there a pattern you see in the last 100 years? 8.What is the next big thing for them? 9.Why is China expansionist? 10.India China Neighbours and Strangers 11.Do we really understand them? 12.What is the single biggest misunderstanding we have about them? 13.Membership of the Chinese Communist Party 14.How is dissent in China? 15.How CCP sees India? 16.How has India's relationship with China evolved over 20 years? 17.Manmohan Singh Speech in China 18.Was India's policy towards China was of appeasement? 19.Why Galwan happened? 20.Was it an intelligence failure? 21.Modi and Xi's Mahabalipuram visit 22.Is this the same as previous stand-offs? 23.Next is what for India? 24.Why China took the risk it did? 25.How many soldiers did China lose? 1. भारत चीन संबंध 2. राजीव गांधी की 1988 की चीन यात्रा और उसके बाद की यात्रा 3. चीन राष्ट्रवादी कब बना? 4. अपमान की सदी 5. चीन में राष्ट्रवाद क्यों मायने रखता है? 6. वे महान छलांग के बारे में क्या बयान देते हैं? 7. क्या कोई पैटर्न है जो आप पिछले 100 वर्षों में देख रहे हैं? 8. उनके लिए अगली बड़ी बात क्या है? 9. चीन का विस्तारवादी क्यों है? 10. भारत चीन पड़ोसी और अजनबी 11. क्या हम वास्तव में उन्हें समझते हैं? 12. हम उनके बारे में सबसे बड़ी गलतफहमी क्या है? 13. चीनी कम्युनिस्ट पार्टी की सदस्यता 14. चीन में असंतोष कैसे है? 15. CCP भारत को कैसे देखता है? 16. चीन के साथ भारत के संबंध 20 वर्षों में कैसे विकसित हुए हैं? 17. चीन में मनमोहन सिंह भाषण 18. क्या चीन के प्रति भारत की नीति तुष्टिकरण की थी? 19. गालवान क्यों हुआ? 20. क्या यह एक खुफिया विफलता थी? 21. मोदी और शी की महाबलीपुरम यात्रा 22. क्या यह पिछले स्टैंड-अप के समान है? 23. अगला भारत के लिए क्या है? 24. चीन ने यह जोखिम क्यों उठाया? 25. चीन ने कितने सैनिक खोए?

#ThePrintUninterruptedChina is trying to change the status quo along the Line of Actual Control with India, Yashwant Sinha, external affairs and finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government tells ThePrint's national and strategic affairs editor Jyoti Malhotra. Sinha pointed out that Vajpayee was always on his guard while dealing with China, that the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladkah, the site of the current standoff between Indian and Chinese soldiers, has never been in dispute and that prime minister Narendra Modi, who has tried to become friendly with China, has not succeeded. He described Army chief M M Naravane's comments on Nepal as being "eminently avoidable," and said the Modi government's neighbourhood policy is in tatters. "You cannot be condescending with Nepal, no matter the temptation,"

Saba Naqvi’s eminently readable ‘Shades of Saffron’ combines straight reportage and in-depth analysis to present real insights into the rise of the BJP, which she has been covering since 1997. A first-person account of events as they happened that also goes deeper to examine the nature of our complex society, this book includes fascinating nuggets of information and great anecdotes too. Here, Naqvi talks about being a liberal Muslim woman journalist covering the BJP since the 1990s, about her tryst with gaumutra soap, and about such politicians as Vajpayee, Pramod Mahajan and Narendra Modi, whom she sees as a “solitary figure”. 

As Election 2019 enters its final lap - the firebrand Arvind Kejriwal opens up about WHAT went wrong with the Congress alliance, HOW the BJP is altering the fabric of the nation and WHEN exactly is AAP going to sort out its leadership crisis. Please note - the interview did start on a 'non-political' note, but soon one realised that this is a difficult job to do - so the best is very very political! :) All the political questions asked are from our patreon.com community. ****** Get the New DeshBhakt Merch! ******* www.kadakmerch.com ***** For more videos, subscribe to our channel ***** Support #TheDeshBhakt & Join the Independent Satire Club on: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/akashbanerjee Instamojo - https://www.instamojo.com/@akashbanerjee Follow us on: Twitter: - @akashbanerjee Instagram: @akashbanerjee.in Facebook - @akashbanerjee.in More Videos: Belagaam 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDSeQ... Vajpayee's Warning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d316r... BJP Manifesto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YozCB... Fascism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVTm... Jaanleva January https://youtu.be/YtGhjUieX7U Faadu Febrary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr6Bz... Top 10 Jumlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhg0C... Biggest Scam of Modi Govt: https://youtu.be/LjLrz0JiUeg Modi Nahi to Kaun? http://y2u.be/AOJGCKfq4c8 Sanskari Journalist http://y2u.be/Qj8CPRdampI Selling Nationalistm http://y2u.be/4GzY0VBAlrM Patra Ke Ratan http://y2u.be/3-LFI5pYwBM Bhakti Khatre mein https://youtu.be/_A9_RgJrrFE The Mossad Way http://y2u.be/i_cUEcDNiFs Fake Nationalism https://youtu.be/VoPg25jZa4Y Surgical Strike 2 https://youtu.be/HoqyeYI0Vsc #TheDeshBhaktInterviews Bhuvam Bam https://youtu.be/IJ32OtAH_0U Dhruv Rathee https://youtu.be/w8shi4da4b0 Shashi Tharoor http://y2u.be/0Eu3J4Oc8NY Kanhaiya Kumar https://youtu.be/hqMjZ6g3PMQ ************** Credits:************ Video Producer: Sarthak Goswami Video Editor: Tushar Chaudhary --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/support

In one of his most extensive interviews till date, Shashi Tharoor speaks to The Deshbhakt for close to an hour on a wide range of issues. From Narendra Modi insulting sanskriti – buy dragging Rajiv Gandhi's name into the election slugfest - to how the Sabrimala issue cannot be looked at only with the lens of Civil Law. While the Indian National Congress did take time to bounce back from the 2014 debacle, Tharoor says that the party and Rahul Gandhi has done a lot of good work in terms of leadership and communication. He believes that given the inputs from the first few rounds of polling - the BJP is going to be history on the 23rd of May. Tharoor also takes some tough punches on Rahul Gandhi's leadership, nepotism in the Congress and the Sunanda Pushkar case that the police is dragging its feet on. He also makes a strong point on how Hindutva needs to be seen as the opposite of the Hindu religion - and nothing more than a political ideology. Watch Tharoor at his candid best – with questions coming in from social media and from the Deshbhakt toli on patreon.com/akashbanerjee who virtually set the question paper for Tharoor. ****** Get the New DeshBhakt Merch! ******* www.kadakmerch.com ***** For more videos, subscribe to our channel ***** Support #TheDeshBhakt & Join the Independent Satire Club on: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/akashbanerjee Instamojo - https://www.instamojo.com/@akashbanerjee Follow us on: Twitter: - @akashbanerjee Instagram: @akashbanerjee.in Facebook - @akashbanerjee.in Soundcloud - @akashbanerjee More Videos: Belagaam 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDSeQ... Vajpayee's Warning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d316r... BJP Manifesto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YozCB... Fascism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVTm... Jaanleva January https://youtu.be/YtGhjUieX7U Faadu Febrary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr6Bz... Top 10 Jumlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhg0C... Biggest Scam of Modi Govt: https://youtu.be/LjLrz0JiUeg Modi Nahi to Kaun? http://y2u.be/AOJGCKfq4c8 Sanskari Journalist http://y2u.be/Qj8CPRdampI Selling Nationalistm http://y2u.be/4GzY0VBAlrM Patra Ke Ratan http://y2u.be/3-LFI5pYwBM Bhakti Khatre mein https://youtu.be/_A9_RgJrrFE The Mossad Way http://y2u.be/i_cUEcDNiFs Fake Nationalism https://youtu.be/VoPg25jZa4Y Surgical Strike 2 https://youtu.be/HoqyeYI0Vsc #TheDeshBhaktInterviews Bhuvam Bam https://youtu.be/IJ32OtAH_0U Dhruv Rathee https://youtu.be/w8shi4da4b0 Shashi Tharoor http://y2u.be/0Eu3J4Oc8NY Kanhaiya Kumar https://youtu.be/hqMjZ6g3PMQ ************** Credits:************ Video Producer: Sarthak Goswami Video Editor: Tushar Chaudhary --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/support

Half the elections are over and in many areas Congress is still thinking of who to front! Do they have a counter narrative to Modi? - Do they know how to appeal to the people? + TONS OF YOUR QUESTIONS! ******** JOIN OUR TELEGRAM GROUP! ******* - link idhar hai: https://t.me/desh_bhakt ****** Get the New DeshBhakt Merch! ******* www.kadakmerch.com ***** For more videos, subscribe to our channel ***** Support #TheDeshBhakt & Join the Independent Satire Club on: Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/akashbanerjee Instamojo - https://www.instamojo.com/@akashbanerjee Follow us on: Twitter: - @akashbanerjee Instagram: @akashbanerjee.in Facebook - @akashbanerjee.in More Videos: Belagaam 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDSeQ... Vajpayee's Warning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d316r... BJP Manifesto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YozCB... Fascism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVTm... Jaanleva January https://youtu.be/YtGhjUieX7U Faadu Febrary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr6Bz... Top 10 Jumlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhg0C... Biggest Scam of Modi Govt: https://youtu.be/LjLrz0JiUeg Modi Nahi to Kaun? http://y2u.be/AOJGCKfq4c8 Sanskari Journalist http://y2u.be/Qj8CPRdampI Selling Nationalistm http://y2u.be/4GzY0VBAlrM Patra Ke Ratan http://y2u.be/3-LFI5pYwBM Bhakti Khatre mein https://youtu.be/_A9_RgJrrFE The Mossad Way http://y2u.be/i_cUEcDNiFs Fake Nationalism https://youtu.be/VoPg25jZa4Y Surgical Strike 2 https://youtu.be/HoqyeYI0Vsc #TheDeshBhaktInterviews Bhuvam Bam https://youtu.be/IJ32OtAH_0U Dhruv Rathee https://youtu.be/w8shi4da4b0 Shashi Tharoor http://y2u.be/0Eu3J4Oc8NY Kanhaiya Kumar https://youtu.be/hqMjZ6g3PMQ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thedeshbhakt/support

For those who haven’t heard, a political debate is raging on whether the 2019 elections will be modelled on 1971, when Indira Gandhi trounced a hasty, ill-matched Opposition alliance, or on 2004, when the “invincible” Vajpayee crumbled before a seemingly weak, incoherent patchwork of parties. As with Modi in 2019, both elections were fought by towering incumbents against a bevy of disparate, but united, opponents. Arithmetically, it was a one-on-one contest in most Lok Sabha constituencies. But the two outcomes were like chalk and cheese. What will be Modi’s fate? Before you can answer that question, you need to know the “how, what, why” of the landmark general elections of 1971 and 2004. Tune in to Raghav’s Take for more.

India Rising: Strategic Affairs Conversations with Mohal and Kishor @mohaljoshi @veggiediplomat Ex-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away on Aug 16, 2018. This episode discusses the achievements and legacy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the realm of foreign policy. Cover tune: Hand In Hand by Nicolai Heidlas | https://www.nicolai-heidlas.com Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this episode of Hafta, Ullekh NP, executive editor of Open Magazine and Dhanya Rajendran, editor-in-chief of The News Minute, join the regular Hafta gang of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan to discuss the aftermath of Kerala floods. Rajendran, who was reporting from the ground, sheds light on how severe the conditions were, how the rescue operations were done and how Kerala is battling since the water has receded. Ullekh, on the other hand, talks about the floods that devastated Kerala earlier.Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away last week, and Abhinandan asks the panel if obituaries should necessarily be tributes. Ullekh, having written a book on Vajpayee, shares some anecdotes from his life, his politics and the many ups and downs of his political career.Then there was Navjot Singh Sidhu’s Pakistan visit and the much controversial hug with Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Did it deserve the prime time coverage? The panel discusses this and the lousy opinion pieces that surfaced.Captain Amarinder Singh and the Punjab Cabinet decided to bring amendments to Indian Penal Code (IPC) to make all acts of Sacrilege of religious texts punishable with life imprisonment. The panel discusses the implications of this move and a lot more on this episode of Hafta. Listen Up! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On today's episode of IVM Daily Abbas and Swati try and deal with the hard hitting topic of death and discuss whether our minds and hearts become fonder of someone automatically when they pass away, and what role the media plays when a public figure dies. You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcast App on Android: https://goo.gl/tGYdU1 or iOS: https://goo.gl/sZSTU5 You can check out our website at http://www.ivmpodcasts.com/ Follow us on twitter, instagram and facebook. We're @ivmpodcasts

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee continues to be on life support system since Wednesday and as per hospital sources at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences his condition “is very critical”. A press release from the AIIMS on Thursday morning said: “Former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s condition continues to be the same. He is critical and is on life support systems.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the AIIMS on Wednesday evening to enquire about the condition of Vajpayee. Apart from PM Modi the former prime minister manmohan singh and other political leaders too had visited. As his health deteriorated, he slowly withdrew himself from public life and was confined to his residence for years. We all pray for his quick recovery. Anusha Bhattacharya gives insights

Son of a freedom fighter, born on 6th September 1959, hails from Rajasthan, India. He got interested in Astrology and the Spiritual Sciences at a very young age and made his first prediction about Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru's death at the age of 5. He got encouraged and started learning Astrology, Palmistry, Numerology and Face Reading by the time he was 9. He started his professional astrological career at the age of 17 and in the past 36 years has helped innumerable people attain happiness and prosperity through his accurate Astrological Advice and Spiritual Guidance. He is the astrological adviser to many business tycoons, politicians and film stars. He believes that in human life there are only three types of problems, Daihik (Physical), Daivik (Spiritual) and Bhautik (Materialistic). And there are only three solutions to these problems, namely Mani (Gemstones), Mantra (Chanting) and Aushadhi (Medicine). It is his firm belief that human life is a precious gift of God and is ephemeral. One should transcend caste, community and religion and embrace Manav Dharam and its three important qualities of Love, Mercy and Forgiveness as this will lead to peace, self realization and divine life. He has been actively involved in social and political activities since childhood. He contested the parliamentary election from Ajmer (Rajasthan) as an independent candidate in 1999. His registered organization Vishwavyapi Manav Kalyan Charitable Trust aims to raise funds and use them for charitable causes like providing education to the underprivileged, orphans and children with special abilities. Bharat Upmanyu is a film maker as well and has written directed and produced television series entitled "Jyotish aur Moksha" and "Jyotish Dharm aur Darshan" on India's leading spiritual channels Aastha and Saadhana respectively. His dream project on television is a series entitled "Saints of India - Bharat Ke Sant". He has researched on the subject for over 20 years and hopes that by portraying the lives of these great saints from the Vedic to the modern age, he can enlighten people all over the world and motivate them to work towards the welfare of society. A film entitled "Mrityunjaya" is also on the cards. He is internationally acclaimed and has satisfied clients in Mauritius, Singapore, Dubai, South Africa, London and USA. His column (Astro Talk) in Hindustan Times was widely appreciated and he also contributed regularly to the magazine Desi Life (a Toronto Star publication). He has also featured as an Astrological expert on one of India's largest portals, www.indiatimes.com. He has many predictions which have come true on record including Indira Gandhi's assassination, Rajiv Gandhi's untimely death, Clinton's election victory, the war at Kargil, W. Bush's second term in 2004, air disasters including Kalpana Chawla's death and Australia's World Cup victories twice consecutively. He had predicted that A.B. Vajpayee would become Prime Minister in 1999. Further he had also predicted that Sonia Gandhi and L.K Advani would not become Prime Minister in 2004.