A Multi-dimensional mess in Karnataka

The fading winter of 2006 was action-filled in the nation's capital. After more than a year and half of dull politics on the Karnataka front, suddenly it all came alive on Feb.1 morning, when the BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu called a press conference. The air was thick with rumours and speculations about the possibility of BJP forming a government with a breakaway group of the Janata Dal(S) lead by its chief, H.D.Deve Gowda's son, H.D.Kumaraswamy.

The press conference was arranged to present the younger Gowda to the media and announce triumphantly the formation of the first BJP government in the south of India. But that was not to be. After hectic phone calls and confabulations between the BJP leaders including B.S.Yediyurappa, Naidu, and Ananth Kumar, among others, it was decided that the only excitement that the journalists could be dished out that day was the impressive spread of dishes on the lawns.Read More...

Politics and Strange Bedfellows: Marxists at the Receiving end

Politics, they say makes strange bedfellows. And we thought we had seen enough of this in this country during the last decade. But the last week's spectacle in West Bengal seemed stranger than fiction, where people and parties holding extreme and conflicting political views, seemed to have converged.

While it was not at all surprising that the fading firebrand and Trinamul Congress chief Mamta Banerjee was visited and supported by the BJP's compromise president, Rajnath Singh as she fasted fighting for the Singur farmers, what really made strange bedfellows was that the extreme left in the form of Naxals, who seem to be regrouping after years in West Bengal, also made common cause.
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BJP: Old wine in older bottle

A few months back, a senior BJP leader also an MP, who has been responsible for the wins and losses of a few States, more wins actually, was distraught about the state of affairs in his party. Discussing informally with this columnist about it, he pointed out that one of the major challenges faced by the party was the question of leadership. A fact, he stressed, everyone and his aunt knew about. But sadly, he said, the two people who need to know about it just refuse to admit it. One does not need to be a very canny observer of politics to know whom he was referring to!

The leadership problem, he correctly analysed, was due to the unacceptability of any one of the second generation of leaders, by the others, which he candidly confessed included himself.

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Should he Hang or Live?

The raging debate on whether Mohd.Afzal alias Afzal Guru, found guilty by the Supreme Court of masterminding the attack on Indian Parliament in 2001, should be sent to the gallows or his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment has understandably taken an emotional turn.

The letters column in the newspapers and blog sites on Internet, are replete with demands of vendetta against the bearded Kashmiri, for his treachery against the nation. Political parties are divided on predictable lines. The BJP is opposed to any mercy for the Kashmiri, in tune with its tough nationalistic posture, while the CPI (M) has openly professed it, again in tune with its liberal pro-Human rights approach, with the Congress central leadership undecided where it stands, even as its Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir petitioned the Prime Minister to grant mercy.

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