Amit Baruah

How the government had you fooled with its new austerity drive

Why must India and Pakistan rely on Western reports for news on each other?

The perils of getting carried away with high-pitched rhetoric against China

An irrational stance on the 2009 suffering of Tamils in Sri Lanka will do no good

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Amritsar was a poor scrawl in the visitors book of a country that has dealt surprisingly well with its colonial past.

Autorickshaw drivers know the way to Sanjiv Bhatt’s house in Memnagar, Ahmedabad. It currently resembles a campaign office as Shweta Bhatt, the IPS officer’s wife, gears up for electoral battle against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Outside, a motley group of cops shuffles about with no obvious purpose. Inside, between many phone calls, the man who has taken on Modi, tells Amit Baruah that he has gone beyond thinking about the personal consequences of his actions. Excerpts from the conversation

CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat on the difficulties his party faces in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly election, the threat from Maoists and his error in allowing the UPA government to negotiate a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency in November 2007.