Mainstream Weekly

India should reassess dependency on Quad | Mani Shankar Aiyar

Mani Shankar Aiyar — 2021-05-29T13:55:09Z

May 09, 2021
While Indian and Chinese army commanders circle around each other, like Sumo wrestlers, waiting for the right moment to clinch, our political leaders have not spelt out what their overarching objectives are in the pursuit of India-China relations.
Is it our strategic aim to rival and overtake the Chinese? And is it, therefore, our tactical aim to not cede “an inch” of what we believe is an integral and inalienable part of Mother India, sanctified by the Vedas, the Puranas, (…)

- 2021

Trump, Modi and a Shaft of Worrying Similarities

Mani Shankar Aiyar — 2017-02-12T17:18:17Z

Francis Fukuyama, the celebrated Japanese-American intellectual, who saw the end of the Cold War as the “End of History” but a “Clash of Civilisations” as the next stage, has explained the accession of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States as “the rise of an American strongman (being) actually a response to the earlier paralysis of the political system”.
The thesis also applies perhaps to the rise of another outlier, Narendra Modi, to the top of the pole in India. While (…)

- 2017

Dilemma of Democracy and Development in India

Mani Shankar Aiyar — 2011-08-20T20:33:26Z

For anyone of my generation, V.K. Krishna Menon was an iconic figure. His image suffered a body blow with the military disaster of October-November 1962 but any fair evaluation of the man and his contribution to the freedom struggle and post-Independence nation-building in the years that went before the hubris and then the closing years of his life must conclude with a tribute to his soaring patriotism, his determined defence of our right to an independent voice in a world unused to such (…)

- 2011

Commonwealth Games: The Pettiness of Eminence

Mani Shankar Aiyar — 2010-08-09T09:51:55Z

(The following piece appeared in Crest sometime ago. Thereafter it was published in The Other Side and other publications. In view of the latest controversy surrounding the Commonwealth Games and the significance of the contents of the former Union Sports Minister's article we are reproducing it with the author's consent and due acknowledgement. —Editor)
Holding the 10-day, Rs 20,000 crore-jamboree reflects a misplaced sense of pride and distortion of national priorities. If not on (…)

- 2010