Swapan Dasgupta

Swapan Dasgupta In a lecture last month, historian Romila Thapar, in a direct reference to the India under Narendra Modi, regretted "the narrowing of the liberal space". Whether she was observant or needlessly paranoid is dependant on how…
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Swapan Dasgupta The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded by a committee of Norwegian politicians, is no exception. Like the now-extinct Lenin Peace Prize or even our own Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace and what-not, its choice is out-and-out political…
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Swapan Dasgupta Compared to the somewhat muted reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's inauguration of the 'Make In India' campaign at Vigyan Bhavan last Thursday, the media has definitely worked itself into a frenzy over his visit to…
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Swapan Dasgupta Every government is periodically confronted with problems created by the swagger and reckless behaviour of its functionaries. However, when such events escalate into a full-blown crisis, it is often symptomatic of a larger…
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Swapan Dasgupta Should Prime Minister Narendra Modi have gone on national TV to address schoolchildren on Guru Utsav or, if you so prefer, Teachers' Day? The answer to this seemingly innocuous but inevitably politicised question will…
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Swapan Dasgupta This irreverent extension of the Modi Mantra, na khaata, na khane deta. (I don't take bribes; I don't let others take bribes), originated in Gandhinagar around 2007 but it has found ready takers among ministers who find…
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The outrage has been most profound in Britain on the realisation that the executioner was in all probability an individual who is nominally British - in that he travels on a British passport and speaks in what has been identified as a…
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