Opinions of a young Indian

         With the biggest show of cricket on earth underway, the excitement level of ardent cricket fans like me is already soaring. We are looking forward to a great tournament and some spectacular display of cricketing prowess over the next month and a half in the birthplace of cricket. World Cups are always special and here in India Cricket World Cups have the potential to literally halt the nation. So my earliest world cup memories go back to the year 2003 and I am sure many of the people of my age group would agree with me on this. You always need something massive, something important or some fascinating connection to develop an interest in any area, particularly in your young age. Cricket WC 2003 gave that spark to most cricket followers of my generation. A spark that turned into devotion and has since resulted in our endless love and passion for the game. The tournament in itself was special, memorable and hugely popular ...

A great statesman once famously said “Today our government has lost the vote of confidence motion by just one vote and the Congress Party is mocking us…but the Congress should never forget that one day we will form government in the entire country and people will be mocking the Congress party”. Late Mr. Vajpayee was absolutely right. This was not just the agony of the moment and he knew very well that Indian politics can be highly generous and can be equally merciless. It has been just a couple of decades since then and we see how the tables have turned. So here we have it…the 'Great Indian Political Blockbuster 2019' comes to an end. The Indian Game of Thrones - as they love to call it has finally culminated. It was a hard (read fiercely) fought battle. It had all that a blockbuster should have – its share of emotions, drama, comedy and even action (you know which state I am talking about). A lot was at stake- political careers, survival of political parties, r...

I have been writing on quite a few issues of late. I mostly have a very clear point of view on the happenings of the country and find blogging as a good source to express and share my opinions. But sometimes the course of events is so disturbing and there is so much agony that it perhaps gets difficult to write it all in one article. Today, I feel exactly the same. There are so many emotions that I do not understand where to start from. We are a country that has traditionally given women the status of Goddess. But what we are seeing happening in different parts of the country has literally shocked me as an Indian citizen. I often feel sad, upset and angry on a lot of things about India, but today, more than all of this I am scared. I am scared for my sisters, in fact scared for all the sisters of India. I don’t know where we are heading towards and whether we could ever give them a safe society to live in. These heinous crimes have indeed got various perturbing interpretations. ...

In spite of all its loopholes and ambiguities, we Indians by and large have a strong belief in our judicial system. Often in times of distress, controversies or administrative inefficiency, it is the judiciary that provides us respite and comes up with a solution in the interest of the nation, thereby monitoring the other organs of the democracy and truly justifying the faith which the citizens of this country show in the law. One of the most talked about and anticipated verdict coming from our courts in the recent times has been that on superstar Salman Khan. So Salman ‘Bhai’- as his fans call him, after a long long trial of 20 years has finally been convicted in the Black Buck hunting case of 1998 and has been sentenced to a five year imprisonment. As has been the case with our country, in a case that took a couple of decades for the verdict, the convict ironically took hardly 48 hours to get a bail. Anyways, these are legal procedures and although they often surprise me, honest...

So our Under 19 Cricket team has made us all proud by lifting the World Cup and we as cricket fans just cannot get the enough of it. It goes on to show the robustness of our cricket infrastructure and has reinforced a strong belief that Indian cricket has a very bright future ahead with a large pool of immensely talented players eager on making a strong impression on the world cricket. Days after the triumph, the BCCI announced cash rewards for the team and the support staff as a token of appreciation and for further motivation. The head coach Rahul Dravid was given 50 lakh rupees while the team members got 30 lakhs each and the other support staff walked away with 20 lakhs each. Interestingly, Rahul Dravid was unhappy with the reward allocation. As humble as he has always been, he felt that there should be no disparity between cash prizes for the team and its support staff as everybody had worked hard equally. And this is not the first such instance. From the time Dravid has st...

Few days back, I was just going through news headlines when I came across a report that mentioned heavy snowfall in parts of USA resulting in a huge damage to life and property. I started wondering how America has become a superpower in spite of all the adversities- unfavorable climate and lack of certain natural resources. And why is India, despite such abundance of resources and propitious geographic conditions, still lagging behind? Well, I perhaps got the answer the very next day when I came to know of the Koregaon Bhima violence in Maharashtra. To be frank, we all know this answer, don’t we? We know very well where do we lag and what has hurt the development prospects of our great country all these years. Incidents like Maharashtra violence are just strong and embarrassing reiterations of the unfortunate state of our country. On going deeper, I came to know of the history of the Battle of Koregaon Bhima, the significance of the date and the prominence which the place and th...

The speculations are over, the chaos and noise has finally ended and the all important verdict is out. The Gujarat Vidhan Sabha Results are finally in our hands and the ruling party BJP has won a consecutive sixth time, thus retaining its bastion in the state and reiterating the strength of saffron in the present political scenario. However, there is much more to this mandate than is visible on the face of it. This win in Gujarat, a state which has traditionally been a BJP stronghold, was not a cakewalk for them this time around. Unlike most of the recent elections, the Congress looked like posing some serious challenge to the incumbent BJP thus making Gujarat elections one of the most hard fought and exciting electoral contests in the recent times. So what were the factors that were playing on the minds of 6 crore Gujaratis when they went out to vote? Firstly, as is quite visible from the result, there was a significant level of resentment against the ruling state government,...