The Times of India

One of the many conspiracy theories about the Iraq war is that the US could not tolerate Saddam Hussein’s decision to designate his oil sales in euros, not dollars. To prevent other OPEC countries from also selling oil in euros, […]

Back in 1990, when Doordarshan had a TV monopoly, I wrote an article titled ‘Let a thousand TV channels bloom\’. That was considered pure fantasy at the time. Leftist colleagues like Praful Bidwai protested that private channels would be vehicles

When the Iraq war began, some drew parallels with the Vietnam war, some with the Afghanistan war of 2001, some with the Gulf War of 1991. In fact the best parallel is with the 1971 Indo-Pak war. That in turn

Many people interpret the Iraq war as part of a US plot to dominate the world through multinational corporations, some of whom are getting huge contracts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure. The military industrial complex, it is said, has benefited enormously

I am shocked and awed. The Iraq war seems as good as over in just three weeks, half the length of the 1991 Gulf War. The US says it wants to set up a democracy in Iraq. That cannot be

Wars are prime time for hypocrisy. The bogus emotion and rhetoric displayed by pro-war factions is fully matched by that of anti-war factions, and bystanders. The prime hypocrite, of course, is the USA. Arab TV stations have broadcast pictures of

Many Indians (including me) are outraged that the USA is ignoring the UN and world opinion on Iraq. Yet do not be surprised if the same Indians (including me) lose that sense of outraged morality if the US wins a

We are used to thinking of the USA as the economic superpower of the world, and the dollar as the strongest currency. Yet the dollar has weakened against the rupee in the last six months, and weakened even more (by

For three decades after independence, India so consistently averaged GDP growth of 3.5 per cent per year that it came to be called the Hindu rate. Then in the 1980s India graduated to the range 5-6 per cent, though unsustainably:

The media are full of stories about US war plans. Apparently it will drop more bombs in the first three days of the war than in the entire Gulf War of 1991. It will occupy the northern and southern regions