Of all the ideas that Narendra Modi has thrown up since becoming prime minister, the Swacha Bharat Abhiyan launched on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday is easily his most imaginative and dare one say, ambitious. Imaginative in the manner in which it has tapped into a concern which has been astonishingly ignored for much too long; ambitious because to ‘clean’ a country of the size of India will require a super-human effort.
So Narendra Modi has finally landed in America to much hype and excitement more than a decade after his last visit. And my mind rewinds to the year 2000 when I was covering another Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s visit to the US. Vajpayee didn’t have a schedule quite as packed as Mr Modi, nor was he as voluble
Every time I take a long international flight, my admiration for seafarers increases. Think of the long months and years that the Columbus and Vasco D Gamas spent discovering new lands and frontiers. By contrast, I have still made it to New York in less than a day and am still fretting over a jet lag.
A Mahabharata is being played out in Maharashtra even before Election Day. For the BJP Shiv Sena alliance, it’s all about kaun banega mukhya mantri. The saffron alliance knows its in pole position to capture power, but wants something more: it wants the kursi of the chief minister.
Indian voters have a knack of surprising political pundits. Just a few weeks ago, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah could do no wrong; now, after a series of byelection reverses, the Modi-Shah duo is being blamed for losing the Midas touch. Neither is the euphoria nor the harsh criticism valid: No two elections are the same and the extreme responses that accompany every election result are perhaps uncalled for.
It appears that the nay-sayers have won the Scotland referendum: Scotland will remain a part of Great Britain after a long and contentious debate. There is no place in the world quite as pretty as the Scottish countryside.
My grandmother always says, once an Amdavadi, always an Amdavadi! I was born in Ahmedabad, a city which for me will always be associated with wonderful childhood memories.
The BJP is beset with a familiar Indian trait of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Till Narendra Modi came along and used every available opportunity to catapult himself on the national centre stage. And yet, even a Modi-led BJP can commit harakiri.
I have met Deepika Padukone just once: it was the CNN IBN Indian of the year awards last year when she won the special achievement prize for having acted in a series of hit films. She cried on that occasion on receiving the award from her father, the legendary badminton player Prakash Padukone.
