Few people will believe that the former External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna's exit from the Congress and entrance to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be a great loss for the former and a considerable gain for the latter ....

These are trying times. Even some friends are turning. They probably see their interest better protected by keeping their options open for adjustments, should excesses increase. And even if they show their residual spunk by digging in their heels in favour of Lucknow's iconic Tunday Kababi, how will it help matters? ....

Mocking a soothsayer who had warned him about the Ides of March (March 15) on his way to the senate for his coronation Julius Caesar had shouted at him “The Ides of March have come”. The soothsayer shot back “Aye Caesar but not gone” if I remember my Shakespeare correctly. What happened later is history. ....

Did the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) desist from naming its Chief Ministerial candidate for UP before the assembly polls because it wanted to spring a nasty, or pleasant, surprise - depending on one's point of view - on an unsuspecting public? ....

With 200 million people, equivalent to the population of Brazil, but with an economy the size of Qatars -- which has 2.4 million people, the same as the town of Bijnore -- the new government of Indias most-populous state Uttar Pradesh faces myriad problems. ....

Promises made and deliverance doesn’t match. Stop fooling them ....

The emphatic victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assembly polls has brought the partys relationship with its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, back in focus. ....

A day after the BJPs thumping victory in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, a little-known progressive Kannada writer became the victim of an ink attack in Davangere town by a group of suspected right-wing activists. In gross defiance of the law and freedom of expression, his face was smeared with black ink in broad daylight. An isolated incident or the new order? ....

Thalaiyuthu panchayat, Tirunelveli district (Tamil Nadu): P. Krishnaveni remembers the night of 13 June, 2011, clear as day. Barely 200 m from her home of 15 years, in front of a local temple, she lay in a pool of her blood. ....

Notwithstanding the notion that society is still discomfited by the progress of women, a clutch of female technopreneurs and faculty at Indias oldest IIT, the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, have called for inculcating gender equity in young minds and providing opportunities based on merit and not on gender -- emphasising skills and confidence are enough to climb to the top. ....