Blog/Opinion

India’s most wanted and Pakistan’s guest for years, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, seems to be nudging his way up on the list of infamy.He is ranked the "third most wanted fugitive in the world", as per the latest list of such people released by US magazine Forbes. In the previous and the first edition of the list in 2008, Dawood had been placed fourth.This time he has replaced Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. The latter is a major figure in international Eurasian organised crime …

When India bid for the Commonwealth Games in 2003, the budget to upgrade facilities in New Delhi was estimated at about Rs300 crore. Now, according to various estimates, that figure oscillates between Rs10,000 crore and Rs30,000 crore. According to a "white paper" released by an NGO using the Right to Information Act, government papers, expert inputs and media reports, the Commonwealth Games are going to be a massive white elephant and the people of Delhi will have to bear the cost. Al…

Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao indicated on Friday that there is as yet no bilateral meeting planned between prime minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani, at the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) meeting to be held in the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu on April 28 and 29. Nor is there a similar move for meetings between the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries of the two countries on the sidelines of the summit. This is good news. Me…

According to a survey by the United Nations, the people of India, the second most populous country in the world,

Narendra Modi, Gujarat and 2002 riots provoke a myriad of reactions the world over and at home. No wonder a delegation of German MPs that visited Ahmedabad on April 7 and 8 ended up stirring a hornet’s nest when they chose to speak about Modi. It’s perfectly okay in a democracy to loathe Modi for what happened in Gujarat in 2002 during his reign. He can be also prosecuted for all the wrongs he committed. He can be voted out of power by the very people who elected him.But even though the…