The new Chief Justice need not seek to carve out a name for himself in history books; he will be remembered in history if he simply remembers that he is empowered enough to see to it that  a wayward executive does not maul the constitution.

The intelligence establishment in Ottawa can be excused for locating in the Indian home minister’s political DNA an eagerness to move beyond conventional “dos and don’ts”, an appetite for risk and recklessness.

The modern Indian state’s grand principles of law and constitution cannot be decided by personalised divine inspiration.

As the RSS inches towards its 100th year, Bhagwat and his co-sanghchalaks realise that the organisation has failed to capture national imagination and admiration.

The Modi-Shah insistence was on ending the debate over the nature of autonomy and authority Srinagar was to have vis-à-vis New Delhi and they hoped voters would place a 'democratic' imprimatur on this argument. J&K's electorate denied BJP that kind of endorsement. This is a strategic setback, whichever way the Modi apologists may want to slice it.

Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah lay out in granular detail Gujarat’s evolution from the pre-colonial era to the Hindutva-drenched polity that it has become today.

The prime minister’s spear-carriers should feel elated that their man is still deemed capable of suborning the integrity and autonomy of constitutional functionaries. What a reputation for a prime minister to acquire that his mere presence is deemed contagious and hence to be spurned! Only those who hope for crumbs of patronage are happy to get themselves photographed with him.

Suddenly we are told that the Nagpur bosses have ideological reservations about Narendra Modi and his assiduously manufactured personality cult. Somehow, we are also expected to believe that the RSS is even unhappy about the BJP’s cultivated politics of communal polarisation.

There can be no doubt, discussion or debate that the only reason Jay Shah is set to become the next boss of the International Cricket Council is because his father is the junior partner in the old, faltering ruling firm of Shahenshah and Shah.

The institutionalised mediocrity of the past ten years has eaten into the vitality of all national endeavours. The ruling elite and its designated chamberlains have developed a deep vested interest in our own inwardness – and in the resulting aversion to global competition and universal definitions of excellence and perfection.

The Modi establishment has been shopping at the American political supermarket of discord and divisiveness. Just as Trump has made boorishness and rudeness part of his political persona, Modi too has re-defined the art of insult and invective, demeaning the dignity of his own office. 

By all accounts, Natwar Singh was a competent and accomplished bureaucrat on his own, but he came to be defined — and he did not seem to mind — as “close” to Indira Gandhi and, then, as “closest adviser” to Sonia Gandhi.

It is the historic conceit of every autocrat to think they would be able to bring unprecedented prosperity and peace in their land if only they shut down the nagging voices from civil society and the carping critics in the Opposition. Sheikh Hasina is not the first and will not be the last ruler to fall in this illusional trap.

Parliament's budget session will tell us whether the slow-cooking national collapse the Modi regime is causing can be averted or not.

In this age of instant analysis and instant judgment, it is easy to forget that every “great leader” is a product of certain circumstances that facilitate his or her acquisition and consolidation of power.

For ten years, the Modi cabal used the tax-payers’ money to manufacture a Personality Cult around the man. Suddenly we were a nation of one- hero-worshipers. A civilisation that takes pride in having the luxury of choosing from as many “84 lakhs devis and devatas” was now being asked to worship only one god.

The Opposition should see to it that Parliament starts functioning as a robust forum for debate and dissent. For ten years the executive has been able to get away with committing many constitutional delinquencies; the voters have now withdrawn that licence.

Voters have reminded one and all – from the President of India to the Supreme Court to the armed forces to the bureaucracy – that the constitution of India remains the only source of legitimacy in the country.

As the election campaign progresses, the prime minister is navigating citizens into a raging storm of visceral animosities.

As a jaded and faded prime minister over-stretches himself, the BJP can see the election is far from being a done deal.