Minus any of the JRD charisma, and in fact distinctly uncharismatic as he was, Ratan Tata still stood out as a gentlemanly leader who kept a sense of grace and an understated manner in a business world that has gotten all too loud and flamboyant

The BJP is not really taking on the immense political challenge of explaining and then persuading the people to go with the right-wing turns in policies it seeks to implement; it is sneaking it in, and in that it is being met with defeat after defeat.

Yet, this will be a delicate task that may test India much more than Bangladesh. This is because the secular credo of Yunus and a pro-poor agenda that has defined his work and his life pose a unique political challenge to the agenda of right-wing politics that holds centre stage in India.

The government’s answer is to keep the pot boiling as it lives a Rip Van Winkle story – almost as if it slept through the election results and now wants to live an old reality in a new world.

As the world turns more careful and looks to build with caution and care, the Indian State is going berserk in multiple directions with the goal of showing its strength outside India while ordinary Indians are getting the rough end.

In that light, the words of Mohan Bhagwat signal discomfiture. But his hesitation to name Modi and call him out indicates that the RSS is caught in a trap of its own making. 

India can be forced to shine but whether the people of India will shine remains the question, and that remains the ground on which the Congress is making huge strides in its fight against the BJP in this election.

Do note that the BJP because of its sloganeering and expectation-setting has to cross its previous mark of 303 to be seen as victorious; the INDIA alliance has to pull the BJP below 272 to claim victory. Barring the possibility, extremely remote at this time, of the Congress and/or the INDIA alliance faring very poorly at these polls, what we…

This is the inner rottenness of India’s growth story, a self-imposed colonisation of a nation that has lost its standing, never mind the growing GDP.

The national mood was well summed up by a cartoon that showed all others in the race locked up, with just the incumbent in the field, and then the question, half in jest: ‘Who is winning?’.