Articles by Mark Tully
What do the verdicts mean for the Congress?
Are its days as the alternative party over? Now that it has lost Punjab, the only two sizeable states that it rules are Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Published on Mar 12, 2022 06:41 PM IST
Haryana: The grim reality of brick kiln labourers
There was no work between March 2021 and February 2022 in the brick kiln. So, the workers earned nothing in that time because they are paid on a piece-work basis.

Updated on Feb 26, 2022 07:44 PM IST
Why Mangeshkar mattered so much
The Mangeshkar I treasure most is her accompaniment to the destitute Nargis struggling to pull a plough in Mother India

Updated on Feb 12, 2022 05:17 PM IST
Modi’s speech marked the end of Nehru era
The RSS leaders were not included, but they didn’t figure in the Independence movement. The most immediate reason for the PM selecting this heterogeneous collection of men as bulwarks of nationalism is to demonstrate the end of the Nehru era

Published on Jan 29, 2022 05:14 PM IST
Need: A genuinely independent justice system
Recent events in Britain and India prove that both countries need a system of justice entirely independent of politicians and civil servants

Updated on Jan 15, 2022 08:49 PM IST
Tutu: In the steps of Mahatma Gandhi
The Indian team’s gesture in honouring Tutu symbolised the nation’s recognition of the link between the Archbishop and Mahatma Gandhi. It was a physical link

Updated on Jan 01, 2022 08:02 PM IST
To protect democracy, remove inequality
Biden’s summit has made it clear that democracy must be seen to deliver greater equality if it is to win the battle against authoritarianism

Updated on Dec 18, 2021 07:40 PM IST
An integrated method to measure poverty
Measuring a nation’s welfare by the size of its economy and, therefore, concentrating on achieving GDP growth is damaging. NITI Aayog’s new national multidimensional poverty index can change that

Updated on Dec 04, 2021 10:20 PM IST
Use religion to battle the climate crisis
In India, almost all the world’s religions have a historic home but the voice of faith on the climate crisis is hardly heard. Religious leaders must come together to demand a change in the narrative of development

Updated on Nov 20, 2021 07:44 PM IST
Why Merkel stood out among world leaders
In spite of her policy of seeking compromise in the best sense of the word, Merkel would not have survived for so long if she had not been able to be tough

Updated on Nov 06, 2021 04:01 PM IST
Is this the end of the Washington Consensus?
A G7 Panel appears to suggest that the Washington Consensus may have taken minimising the State too far and allowed the private sector to become influential

Updated on Oct 23, 2021 02:19 PM IST
Gandhi, Tagore, and India’s coaching culture
NEP can only succeed if there are enough schools and colleges, teachers and lecturers, to provide education. A Unesco report warns that 1.1 million teacher vacancies are unfilled. The situation is particularly dire in rural India.

Updated on Oct 09, 2021 12:19 PM IST
India’s babus are both perpetrators and victims of a flawed system
Kaushik Basu’s observations and the experiences of former IAS officers, BD Pande and Keshav Desiraju, demonstrate the talent that there was in the bureaucracy under the Congress and the hindrances which hampered talented bureaucrats. Has this changed under the Bharatiya Janata Party? That could be the subject of another column.

Updated on Sep 25, 2021 06:51 PM IST
Bridging the gap between the sciences and arts
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi has become the first major technology educational institution to have a chair in Indian classical music and arts

Updated on Sep 11, 2021 07:34 PM IST
Remembering Aurobindo and his quest for unity
Aurobindo’s dream of a World Union has also not been fulfilled. It could be argued that the world has become more united over the last 74 years, but, at this time, the need for greater unity is particularly obvious.

Updated on Aug 28, 2021 08:28 PM IST
India-UK: The evolution of a post-colonial relationship
British PM, Boris Johnson, seems to have learnt the lesson from this sorry story: Don’t push too hard, don’t ride roughshod over Indian sensitivities if you want to negotiate successfully, as he does

Updated on Aug 15, 2021 05:30 PM IST
Pegasus and the threat of an Orwellian State
George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is a more widely known example of an imaginary State which has robbed its citizens of their individuality and their ability to recognise truth

Updated on Aug 02, 2021 08:24 AM IST
UP’s population policy push is unwarranted
The measures designed to make parents afraid of having more than two children include some which would rob them of their legally guaranteed rights

Updated on Jul 19, 2021 07:03 AM IST
The Congress, dynasty and a lost opportunity
Immediately after Rajiv Gandhi’s death, Congress sycophancy triumphed over sensitivity and sense. The CWC passed a resolution calling on Sonia Gandhi to lead the party. She refused. Here was the golden opportunity to choose a leader, independent of the dynasty. But Rao was chosen since he had no base in the party and, being taciturn by nature, had none of the charisma needed to win votes.

Published on Jul 03, 2021 06:37 PM IST
G7: A strong message on democratic values
Could the PM’s public support for the values of democracy mean that he now plans to stop his government from veering further towards limiting the freedom of expression?

Updated on Jun 19, 2021 08:28 PM IST
When the Indian judiciary stands up
The judiciary’s willingness to stand up to the executive has already been welcomed widely. Now the court will be asked when it is going to examine other long-standing examples of the government’s questionable use of power

Updated on Jun 08, 2021 07:34 AM IST
Restoring the spirit of cooperative federalism
If the prime minister and chief ministers are to be cooperative federalists, electoral defeats will have to be taken with good grace by the central government. In Bengal, the unprecedented provision of armed central paramilitary police for every BJP legislator; the arrest of four TMC leaders while two former party leaders, now with the BJP, accused in the same case, are left untouched; and the bias of Bengal governor does not signal cooperative federalism.

Published on May 22, 2021 07:13 PM IST
Poll results show the power of federalism
For the BJP, the lesson of the Bengal election — taken with the results from Kerala and Tamil Nadu — is that India, by its nature, is a federal nation. Its nationalism has to rejoice in its diversity rather than try to bind the nation together in an unnatural uniformity.

Updated on May 08, 2021 06:43 PM IST
The contours of the Bengal battle
In this election, the BJP is hoping that its Hindu identity will trump Banerjee’s Bengali identity. To strengthen its bid for the Bengali Hindu vote, the BJP has accused her of cultivating a Muslim vote bank

Published on Apr 24, 2021 08:26 PM IST
The economic rationale of bank nationalisation
A better solution than privatisation may well be giving PSBs autonomy to reform themselves and function free of political interference. Remember, most East Asian success stories have been underpinned by financial systems effectively controlled by governments, and in the West, governments have had to rescue private banks from bankruptcy. India should think through its approach to public banks.

Updated on Apr 10, 2021 03:40 PM IST
For migrant workers, a year of suffering
Why is manufacturing so heavily dependent on exploited labourers, who are effectively bonded workers? There are laws regulating the employment of migrant workers but they are not enforced.

Published on Mar 27, 2021 02:10 PM IST
The Pope sends out a message of fraternity
During the Iraq visit, the Pope’s call for fraternity was appreciated by Muslim leaders. Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayeb, the Sunni Grand Imam of al-Azhar University, tweeted, “I hope his trip achieves the desired outcome to continue on the path of human fraternity.”

Published on Mar 13, 2021 06:20 PM IST
Securing India’s international image
India is described as a flawed democracy in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. It has slipped from 27 in the rankings in 2014 to 53 in 2020. But does the government care about this slippage or indeed should it care? Three recent events make me wonder.

Published on Feb 27, 2021 08:09 PM IST
From the Himalayas, a warning for us
The 2021-22 Union Budget will increase the pressure on the government to ignore the concerns of nature. It is heavily focused on investments in infrastructure, especially roads and railways, which the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, hopes will revive Gross Domestic Product growth. This may be true. But these projects will, also, inevitably give rise to concerns about their environmental impact.

Updated on Feb 14, 2021 06:48 AM IST
Budget 2021: Overcome poverty, battle inequality
It would be right to go back to socialism’s commitment to equality, and to reform India’s economy so that overcoming poverty once again becomes the top priority.

Updated on Jan 31, 2021 06:19 AM IST