M J Akbar

We must assume, however, that the Pakistan army is, this time, on board  History, sometimes, seems to be an accumulation of moments. Few have been as spectacular as Prime Minister Narendra M

A mindset trapped in prejudice Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s outburst against the Union government after CBI raided the offices of a member of his personal staff can be placed in t

Vendetta politics   The bizarre is not as distant from our political discourse as we might wish it to be. There are times, however, when a party’s defense-offense explanation becomes so overstretched<a href="https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2015/12/16/bluff-is-not-course-correction/" title="Read more" >...</a>

Censorship is unethical, illegal and unworkable The relationship between government and media is surely the most tempestuous fact of any democracy. The two represent parallel poles of power, bu

People know what they want  The Bihar Assembly election has become a powerful debate between sectarian sentiment and economic logic. The bookends of sentiment, caste and community, are familia

Behind the Pawar gambitIt has been a long while since anyone has issued an ultimatum to Sonia Gandhi and survived to tell the tale. On July 24, Sharad Pawar sent a public message to the Congress pre

When a joint family begins to creak at the joints, the neighbourhood wakes up. Gossip time. Domestic quarrels seep through porous walls and become the stuff of public speculation in the teashop. Quest

Will it survive this summer? A fall from grace is par for the course. A slide into humiliation is another discourse. Defeat is the familiar price of failure in democracy. Humiliation is<a href="https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/03/10/upa-in-trouble/" title="Read more" >...</a>

Congress couldn’t get its act together How did relations between Samajwadi Party and Congress descend, within the space of half a campaign, from flirtation barely disguised by a Lucknow burqa and hints<a href="https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/02/25/revenge-of-the-provinces/" title="Read more" >...</a>

There is something about June that does not quite agree with Congress fortunes. On June 25, 1946, the Congress accepted the Wavell plan to protect a notional form of Indian unity, only<a href="https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/06/11/beware-the-ides-of-june/" title="Read more" >...</a>

Government is instinctively equated with power; and we expect the powerful to fall with a thud like an oak tree that makes the earth quiver. The ambience of authority makes us oblivious to another pos

The British Raj was the high noon of bureaucracy. The British sepoy armies might have won the day from Plassey to Seringapatnam and Alwaye, but it was the pre-1857 "writer" and post-1857 Indian Civil