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Wednesday, April 29, 2026
HomeSG Writings On The Wall

SG Writings On The Wall

Writings on the Wall is a metaphor that grew out of my travels, mostly through the poll-bound regions of India and the neighbourhood over nearly 25 years. Because, even more than its big festivals, the subcontinent comes to life during its elections. And what’s on people’s minds, their aspirations, joys, concerns and fears, you can pretty much understand by reading these writings on the wall. These can be graffiti, advertising, skylines, fences, or even rubble.

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

Shekhar Gupta -
Aspiration is turning into desperation. Nobody has much hope in an era of new Hindu Rate of Growth, and identity politics is back.
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Reading the realigning colours of politics in Bengal

Shekhar Gupta -
Reading the realigning colours of political India.
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Gen gana mana of youth

SGIN -
Aspiration screams out of every billboard in Bihar, and could well decide who gets to rule the state, come 8 November.
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East to west, money defines politics in India’s double-income, no ideology city of ‘freedom fighters’

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

Shekhar Gupta -
Let me begin this ride with an opening gambit that only a pukka native of my home state could get away with in our...
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Before the Secular Dip, Hold Your Nose

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

Shekhar Gupta -
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,...
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The rich and the ostrich

Shekhar Gupta -
Absolute truths do not matter. Which is why, even in landslide election verdicts in India, voter swings are rarely in double digits.
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Mere pass space hai

SGIN -
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.
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Navi Calcutta

Shekhar Gupta -
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...
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