Sunday Posts

There are many remarkable things about the Indian Elections 2014. Many in the country believe that this will mark an end and a beginning: Which end and which beginning are being contested, though. It may be the end of the unipolar politics of Congress versus the others, but then only to be replaced by Hindu Nationalists versus the other politics. It may be the decline of India's most prominent political family, the Gandhis, which is drawing most attention: The family scion, Rahul Gandhi, has been comprehensively rejected by the Indian voters. This may also be the end of the Indian Republic as conceived by its founding fathers, and what comes next can be reasonably called the Second Republic.  That may mark a new beginning. Indian Second Republic may not have any of the indecisiveness of the French. Duke of Wellington mused during the Second Republic "France needs a Napoleon and I can't yet see him", but India has its Bonaparte now.  This election marks a firm ch...

The impending State Assembly elections in West Bengal, due over next couple of weeks, remind me that I have been writing this blog for more than five years. I suddenly recall my post after the results were published last time, and my arguments that the Communist Party led Left Front remained the best alternative for West Bengal. I returned to this subject often thereafter, given that Kolkata is still home, wherever in the world I may live. My stance rarely changed, though. I maintained, for the most part of the last five years, that the Left Front remained the best options for the people in Bengal. I despaired at the personality cult of the opposition leader and her tantrum-prone politics . I deplored her populist stances over the industrial projects in West Bengal , and wished that her alliance partners, the Congress Party, will abandon her in time for 2011 elections. But, by 2009, for all my affiliations to the left of the centre parties and my dislike of leaders like Ms Banerjee ,...