For reasons internal to China, this confrontation has provoked a response that is unparalleled in its rhetorical ferocity and that also shows no signing of slowing down.

Of course, it is pure coincidence that Kumar's JD(U) and the BJP together have a majority of one in the Bihar Assembly. Such things as arithmetic can have no bearing on Kumar's decisions, only his conscience does.

Only two people know the reasoning behind decisions taken by the Bharatiya Janata Party: Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Venkaiah Naidu may have wanted the job, but that's not usually an asset in Modi's eyes, or Shah's. So what else could have set him apart from the pack?

If Gandhi was going to meet the ambassador, he should have emerged and declared that he had gone to convey his support for the government's stand, and to indicate political unity at home.

Hindi fanatics in the north have in fact long argued that they are second-class citizens, behind English-speakers.

This is, frankly, the first time that I have felt that the Modi government has taken a stand that the preceding government would have balked at doing.

We have created a slow and lazy IT sector, which invests too little in itself, in its people, and in the future.

Unlike the Congress when it was in power, the BJP understands the power of narrative - and the power of deflection. The Congress chose to weakly defend its record of governance, instead of changing the subject massively. The BJP, clearly, has no such intention.

There is something pathological about how we report and respond to news these days. Whatever may have happened, even if relatively routine and predictable, is presented as one of three or four narratives, mostly to do with Narendra Modi.

Is Arvind Kejriwals dream dead? Perhaps. That is certainly one big possibility when one looks at the results being declared of by-elections across India. But before that, you have to ignore the rest of the noise.

It isn't India, but China that's playing with fire at the moment.

Choosing the direction of his government is entirely Adityanath's prerogative. If he believes that it should be oriented towards the three traditional Hindutva concerns - Ram, Cow and Muslim - then he has every right to push it in that direction, subject, of course, to the checks on executive authority that the constitution provides. Who knows? A g...

What was the Congress thinking? That state governors are still 10 Janpath appointees instead of coming from Nagpur and Ashoka Road? It still has the entitled lethargy it displayed in government, and none of the hunger that a party that has practically no governments to its name should display.

Here's the big picture: Modi and Shah can celebrate. UP can perhaps look forward to what it has long lacked: co-ordination between state and central governments to solve development problems. In 2019, Modi will start with a giant head start. But he will also, for the first time be playing defence, with no state governments or Congress to blame. Let...

Of course, these polls will be forgotten once the real results start coming in on Saturday. But nothing that they have revealed dents the meta-narrative that has been true for months, even years, now: that Narendra Modi is proceeding swiftly, with assistance from the AAP, towards his long-term goal of a Congress-mukt Bharat.