Mahatma Gandhi taught us the power of love, but Modi has shown how much more potent hate is.

My generation of midnight’s children were brought up on the drivel that we are a tolerant, caring people, but that’s a myth and a delusion that have been truly “interred with their bones” in the last decade.

It is a moral obligation for all who care for the country and its values of tolerance, equality and justice to rise above self-interest and bring back democracy and decency to our polity.

Today’s civil servants are openly subverting established systems to please their political masters.

Today’s civil servants are openly subverting established systems to please their political masters.

Despite the railways minister harping on about how the Indian Railways have been transformed, the government has instead undone systems and structures in the railways that were developed and nurtured over the decades.

What we are witnessing today is no ordinary case of a leader in an exalted state of self-love or self-absorption. Equally unhinged is the ignoble servitude of the millions of devotees in the country who have come under the spell of this consummate artist.

The collective hullaballoo over the consecration of the Ram temple under the aegis of the Modi government represents the triumph of religious fundamentalism over secularism.

Our world is being ruined by malevolent old politicians who preach high principle but act dishonourably.

The doctrine of Hindu exclusiveness has stimulated a second partition of the country, albeit metaphorical in the sense that it is not a physical territorial split but a schismatic division of minds based on religion.

We need changes all around, starting with the cash-rich but soul dead BCCI and its panel of experts.

Autocratic to the core, Kejriwal went about neutralising anyone who was seen as a competitor or pricked his conscience.

What we see today is not only corruption by individuals but wholesale, across the board subornation of systems and institutions.

After the “fun and games”, celebrities have a social responsibility to use their privileged position to make the world a better place.

In an age of racism, crassness and bad behaviour on and off the field, one desperately looks for increasingly rare acts of decency and sportsmanship.

It’s not about his people; it’s not about his alma mater; it’s not about his party; it’s all about himself.

With its arsenal of zealous mobs, Goebbelsian propaganda, media lapdogs, infiltrated institutions, inexhaustible funds et al., it has captured the social space.

The 2024 general elections will be fought under the aegis of social media, which now occupies a central place in our democracy. And it will not be a level playing field.

Modi’s disparaging and vituperative attitude toward his opponents has rubbed off on his followers who believe that the louder, more toxic and abusive they are, the more convincing their argument.