Nov.

If state institutions have become comatose, there is stasis on nearly every front, and if the chief minister — even if well-meaning — becomes the custodian of all authority, the capacity of the system

The sense of a deep-going institutional crisis in Bihar, which negatively impacts every sector of life, is overwhelming.

Even dissident JD(U) legislators here say that chief minister Nitish Kumar’s political position with the Mahadalits (“super dalits”) and the ati-pichra (most backward), the new social categories he has created to consolidate his electoral position in return for benefits directed at them, was unassailable.

The year 2005 had seen not one but two Assembly elections in Bihar, in February and November. The February poll was the first for the state after Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar.

It’s been just over a week since the Allahabad high court verdict in the Ayodhya title suit case.

When the all-party delegation visits Kashmir on its listening brief next week, as per the schedule being drawn up now, it may well find it is either being given a hot reception or the cold shoulder by

Observers and analysts in Kashmir desiring a speedy return to normality worry that an absence of “political imagination” on the government’s part is encouraging the project of rapid religious mobilisation in the Valley, not unlike the processes that produced Bhindrawale in Punjab three decades ago.

The China question possibly exercised India’s ambassadors and high commissioners overseas, who had gathered in the capital for a five-day meet last week, more than any other — and there was no certain

The news of far-reaching significance in Kashmir is the vice-like grip over the current anti-government agitation established by the relatively small but determined group of pro-Pakistan separatists, now guided by a younger leadership in the main.