Blog 3 columns

An interesting Whatsapp message doing the rounds“ Americans recently found out that it’s much easier for them to change presidents in other countries than they can do in their own country.” From whatever the source of  this post, the message is that  the largest democracy India was ke[...]

It is sad that when India is poised to fight back Covid-19 pandemic with the help of a vaccine it has produced in collaboration with the British, it will not be hosting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for this year’s Republic Day celebrations. The visit was not intended by either[...]

I have never been a lawmaker, but am seized by nostalgia now that India’s Parliament Complex is set to go, replaced by another. A parliamentary correspondent for long, I am aware I am not breaching any rules, traditions or Privileges that govern the temple of the world’s largest democ[...]

When Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and its alliance partners came to power in 2017 with a huge majority, many hoped that it would be a new beginning. Nepal has been in a painful transition from a monarchy to republican democracy. But it is in tu[...]

I was on the left of the road to Dacca with the Infantry while my guns were some 250 metres to the right of the road under a Junior Commissioned Officer. There was a small grove which separated the guns from the Lakhya river by about 250-300 metres and had our Infantry was deployed in[...]

Akhaura having been secured we were then ordered to move towards Brahmanabaria which was some 25 kms North West of our location. We started our advance along the railway track which was on a bund , some 10-15 feet above the rest of the low-lying land. It was the driest patch of earth [...]

“Gentlemen only God can stop this war from taking place” said Maj Gen Benjamin Franklin Gonsalves, General-Officer-Commanding of the 57th Indian Mountain (Mtn) Division (Div) as he addressed his Officers. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had returned from USA after making a last ditch eff[...]

Those applauding the election of Kamala Harris, the first woman Vice President of the United States would do well to look at South Asia, the region where her mother was born.     The region hasan array of women leaders from Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandarnaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga to[...]

Operation Deception One of the best kept secret of the 1971 war was the fact that India laid out an elaborate deception game to beguile the enemy into believing that its war aim was to merely help the Mukti Bahini liberate Khulna, Chittagong and a few other districts, from where the i[...]