For the BJP, all is not lost. Those who discount the Modi effect do it at their peril. He remains a very potent campaigner and can lift the party and its votes considerably. The BJP has five months to throw more goodies at the electorate including the universal medical policy before the tournament begins in Central India in November.
The Karnataka episode is over - at least for the time being. We can blame the BJP, Governor Vajubhai Vala and B S Yeddyurappa. But that is not fair. Governors have been disgracing themselves for years - and with increasing frequency. We have been going down this slippery slope for at least the past 50 years where Governors are partisan, bend rules,...
Fortis Healthcare Ltd. has to admit a new owner to keep the lights on. Before it does, though, India's second-largest hospital chain must write four of its board members a discharge slip.
Unfortunately, today's BJP is not the BJP of Atal-Advani, which I had joined. It has been taken over by people to whom nothing matters more than power. I am glad I am out of it.
The debate now shifts to how Modi can be defeated. He can be outplayed at his own game. An earlier version of this was the BJP defeat in Gujarat when it tried to defeat Ahmed Patel in his re-election to the Rajya Sabha.
In the endless search for the magic key that Democrats can use to unlock the hearts of white people who vote Republican, the hot new candidate is "respect." If only they cast off their snooty liberal elitism and show respect to people who voted for Donald Trump, Democrats can win them over and take back Congress and the White House.
As is common among sheltered men of extreme privilege, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempts to share relatable thoughts on modern life, his words tend to expose a speaker who has no actual familiarity with social trends but has clearly been briefed to their existence. The commencement speech he delivered Wednesday at New York Univer...
Other than the embarrassment of asking the country's second-largest state-run lender to, well, stop lending, there's no other reason why India should allow Punjab National Bank to advance even one rupee to anybody except the government.
Yet the BJP, as well, has a bit of introspection to do. It has come to rely far too much on the Prime Minister's charisma, and its own belief that it will shape the narrative to its advantage.
By 3 pm, the Congress announced that it would extend support to the JD(S) to form the government. However, at the larger level, the Congress has lost an election which it should have won. And to my mind, the real winner in these elections is H D Deve Gowda.
