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Monday, March 16, 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

Gulf conflict pushes Dubai diamond traders to eye Surat for rough stone auctions. But there are hurdles

Industry leaders say India’s complicated customs process and GST levies are deterrents for traders to come to Surat for auctions.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.