During my visit to the Select Book Shop on Brigade Road, Bangalore, I found a slim copy of The Confluence: A Play by Suri V. Subramanyam. Without even looking for any details, I just brought that book because it’s a very small book (6 pages) and I would need something to read in a single sitting if I have some time to pass between work. I read this book today finally. It’s a small one-act play in which the characters are Intellect, Heart and Soul. A very pleasant read. I could not find the publisher or any details about the author. This play emphasises how there must be a confluence, a perfect ..read more

Sometimes even just ‘1’ vote will matter a lot. Based on Assembly elections data from 1962 till now (taken from TCPD), 7 MLAs won with a margin of only ‘1’ vote. It means 7 people who could have become MLAs did not because someone from their kith and kin would not have taken voting very seriously and simply skipped voting in the election. I can just imagine the situation of people belonging to the person who lost the elections, who didn’t vote thinking their candidate will surely win anyway. Source: TCPD ..read more

Ambedkar with SK Bole and Savita Ambedkar Myth making is an integral part of political science and politics, especially when it comes to immortalising famous personalities. To keep the memories of notable people alive, we share stories about them, and their remarkable messages and acts. Sometimes we create stories and myths about them. Though those tall tales are not real, they have the capacity to carry the message of the leader to the people. Those stories and myths make a leader’s message easily comprehensible to the masses and drive them towards certain goals. They help in starting the con ..read more

Jagat Narain Lal (Source: Anant347/ Wikimedia Commons – CC0 1.0.) One day, in the early years of Independence, Jagat Narain Lal and Syed Mahmud (both senior members of the Congress Party and part of Bihar Cabinet) were travelling in a train, along with B.N. Azad, the editor of the newspaper ‘The Indian Nation’. During that journey, Jagat Babu and Syed Mahmud began an interpretative dialogue on Bhagavad Gita and the Quran. What was interesting about this conversation was, unlike what would be our taken-for-granted assumption, it was Jagat Babu with his knowledge of Persian, talking about the Qu ..read more

Source: Scroll.in One of the greatest tragedies for the disciplines of history and political science in India is the fact that we have less biographies about the people we study about. What we have are (a) hagiographies that are uncritical and hero-worshipping in their content and bizarre in their prose, (b) good and quality biographies focusing only about few individuals like Gandhi and Nehru, and (c) biographies written only with the intent of defaming any individual or for propaganda. Seldom we come across good biographies about relatively forgotten individuals who had a huge impact on publ ..read more

While his economic contributions are well recognised, P V Narasimha Rao’s role in reorienting India’s foreign policy is undermined. During his tenure, P V Narasimha Rao was committed to responding to global challenges by reorienting the foreign policy of India based on national interest and bringing several shifts in India’s foreign policy amid unfavourable domestic conditions, leading a minority government for a full term, winning three no-confidence motions in Parliament, overcoming an economic crisis, and the demolition of Babri Masjid despite not being a mass political leader. This letter ..read more

Charan Singh standing, fifth from left, 1930 Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, 1967 With Biju Patnaik (right) and Raj Narain (left), 1979 1902 Born on 23 December in village Nurpur, Meerut district. 1923 Received his BSc from Agra College, Agra. 1925 Received his MA from Agra College. Married to Smt Gayatri Devi on 5 June 1925 1926 Received his LLB from Meerut College, Meerut, Agra University. 1928 Practiced law in Ghaziabad. 1929 Joined the Indian National Congress and, thereafter, gave up his practice for a full-time political career. Established the Town Congress Committee of ..read more

Now that the Bharat Ratna is conferred, Narasimha Rao will be greatly talked about, his politics, his role in the 1991 Economic reforms, and how the Congress party tried to erase his legacy. But three things less spoken about Rao, the man behind all the politics has greatly amazed me.  Polyglot and Scholar: Rao knew more than 13 languages including English, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Sanskrit, Persian, Spanish, Hindi and Oriya. In 1977, he was an opposition MP in Lok Sabha and used most of his energies in defending Indira Gandhi. But whenever he could spare time, Rao headed to the lan ..read more

Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres and President of the World Bank Ajay Banga, RE: Setting serious goals to combat inequality As a group of economists and leaders in the fight against extreme inequalities from around the world, we write to request your leadership towards ensuring that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank back vital new strategic goals and indicators, that can redouble efforts to address rising extreme inequality. We are living through a time of extraordinarily high economic inequality.  Extreme poverty and extreme ..read more

In someone’s shed in someone else’s arms the boy has slept; he gets up at dawn, kicks the laggard beside him, slings a sack-bag over his shoulder, and out he goes into lanes and filthy alleys. He comes to a corporation dump, stands with clasped hands as if discovering a treasure, turns and wades in; his hands sift through it as if removing a tiny piece of severed intestine with a doctor’s eye. Among the broken glass there, the plastic bottles, the torn rubber condoms, the old papers he lifts, there where some housewife has wrapped a sickening red tampon— below all that, something brings a smil ..read more