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Monday, February 23, 2026
HomeSG Writings On The Wall

SG Writings On The Wall

In Uttar Pradesh, the campaign’s back to being old trench warfare

Aspiration is turning into desperation. Nobody has much hope in an era of new Hindu Rate of Growth, and identity politics is back.

Reading the realigning colours of politics in Bengal

Reading the realigning colours of political India.

Gen gana mana of youth

Aspiration screams out of every billboard in Bihar, and could well decide who gets to rule the state, come 8 November.

East to west, money defines politics in India’s double-income, no ideology city of ‘freedom fighters’

Delhi is driven by greed, ambition and arrogant, freebooting cynicism as no other city in the country. AAP has figured out the havenots, BJP its old, pushy made-gooders, and Congress none at all.

Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi, Modi in Mhara state

Let me begin this ride with an opening gambit that only a pukka native of my home state could get away with in our...

Before the Secular Dip, Hold Your Nose

Having made only four really short visits as a reporter to Varanasi, spread over almost four decades, I can't be so pretentious as to...

Huggies diapers in Vaishali, Muslim-Dalit IIT-Jee coalition

Bihar is the cradle of India's post-1975 politics. The JP movement that provoked the Emergency and started the process of the Congress party's decline,...

The rich and the ostrich

Absolute truths do not matter. Which is why, even in landslide election verdicts in India, voter swings are rarely in double digits.

Mere pass space hai

Space is the currency of Mumbai and in such short, finite supply, it occupies the minds of everyone — the rich, the poor, and the powerful.

Navi Calcutta

Wasseypur, immortalised in Anurag Kashyap's violent two-part epic, is now more or less subsumed by the expanding coal town of Dhanbad, and located in...

On Camera

Calm down, people. Alia Bhatt didn’t make history by saying Namaskar at BAFTA

What really troubles me is the idea of an actor with British citizenship representing India at the UK’s national film awards ceremony, all while wearing an Italian designer.

In the West, there’s anxiety. In India, optimism—Rishi Sunak says India poised to be leader in AI

On Wednesday, the former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was speaking in New Delhi at a Carnegie & Observer Research Foundation event on AI.

India eyes 6th generation FCAS, looks at tying up with France for possible collaboration

Initial talks held on the possibility of India entering the programme that was started in 2017 between France, Germany and Spain to ensure European sovereignty in defence and security.

No country is ever fully sovereign. Cold War era taught India its real meaning

India’s fraught neighbourhood places multiple constraints on its strategic choices. It leaves no time to take a deep breath, lean back and reset.