Arun Nehru

Mar 31, 2010

Arun Nehru
Chairman, Gujarat Ambuja Cements Ltd
Mumbai

Biting the ballot

Though the Bharatiya Janata Party is still rallying around P.A. Sangma, the fact that NDA alliance partners, Janata Dal (United) and the Shiv Sena, along with the CPI(M), the Forward Bloc, the Biju Janata Dal and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam are firm in their commitment to support Pranab Mukherjee as the President means that the veteran Congressman is set to move into Rashtrapati Bhavan soon.

India’s new untouchables

Andhra Pradesh is in the news, but for all the wrong reasons. Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and chief of YSR Congress, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on May 27 in a disproportionate assets case.

Beleaguered at the Centre

The UPA-2’s “all is well” third anniversary party early last week, where Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav the “chief guest”, would have been the development of the week had it not been for a political accident that startled the nation.

Watch Gujarat, the game changer

François Hollande taking oath as the President of France is just the beginning of major changes Europe is gearing up for.

A general disarray

Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh has called the media news report about troop movement “absolutely stupid” (a newspaper report last week alleged that the Central government was “spooked” by the movement of two key Army units towards Delhi on January 16-17, 2012).

Think 2014

A strange situation is developing in the country and senior politicians, already perplexed by the pace of events, no longer have a clear view of the future. Over the last 30 years, many of us have seen and experienced sudden turns of events in coalition politics, but today it has become difficult to predict what is in store in the next 24 hours.
Despite the fact that the UPA can arrange the “numbers” required to maintain its majority in Parliament, there is deep political uncertainty at the Centre.

Tinkering spies

When the Cold War ended, everyone thought that conspiracy theories would disappear, too. However, a return to the untainted past is never possible. For example, 20 years ago few would have believed that political and economic power would shift, even marginally, towards the Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) from the developed West. The 2008 economic crisis accelerated this process, though many nations continue to live in denial. And some, it now seems, in malevolent wait.

To which song will UP play musical chairs?

After the peaceful second phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh, and as we near the climax of the election campaign, I see the Samajwadi Party (SP) sprinting ahead and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) losing ground. However, the BSP is still way ahead of the Congress, with the BJP trailing as a distant fourth.
I do not know whether the Batla House encounter controversy and the Muslim quota issue raised by Salman Khurshid will have any impact on the poll trends, but I don’t think the Congress will jeopardise its upper caste votes for minority gains. The Congress and the BJP dominate the upper caste votes and even a slight shift can cause a major upset.

Smiles and trials

Although the 2G octopus has surfaced again, its tentacles striking in all directions after the Supreme Court cancelled the 122 licences to telecom operators, 2012 seems to be going well for the UPA.

2014, as seen from UP acid test

Election campaigns and forecasts are not new to me. I remember going as an eight-year-old on my first election campaign to Sitapur, from where my grandmother, Uma Nehru, was an MP in 1952. But I recollect little except the “cold water” breaks in a gruelling schedule on dusty roads and was fascinated by the Electrolux refrigerators, which worked on kerosene burners. Things today are very different.

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