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About Me

Former political editor of the Times of India, as representative of the paper in Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital, I have covered the state government between late 1997 and early 2013. In formal journalism since 1979, I believe in what George Orwell said, "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." 
Before I joined TOI in 1993, I was in Moscow, covering Mikhail Gorbachev's rise and fall between 1986 and 1993 for Patriot, Delhi's semi-Left paper, and weekly newsmagazine Link. Though ideologies have fascinated me, I feel, in the changed scenario, they are losing ground. And when someone asks me, what's replaced ideologies, I just have one answer: "I am a newsperson, How do I know?"
I have been associated with the Times of India's online site blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, and my column was called True Lies, which I have tried to continued in this site. 
Many of my byline stories published in the Times of India between 2001 and 2013, when I covered the Gujarat government under Narendra Modi as chief minister, can be accessed here. 
My write-ups here have been a modest attempts to bring forth impressions of the life around and efforts of the establishment to influence it.

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Instilling sense of insecurity among 'fearful' millions, Modi to win comfortably

  This was one of the most interesting reports I read on the Lok Sabha elections. Titled, "If Sangam Pilgrims Are Bellwether, They Indicate Clear Majority for Modi",  published  in what is considered to be an anti-Narendra Modi site, "The Wire", it reports on interaction with boatmen and pilgrims from across India, even as pointing towards why Modi would get a "clear majority."
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India's 78% firms think achieving net zero is cost to business, 52% say it's risky: Report

 A leading global management consulting firm working with more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500, as well as with government bodies and nonprofit organizations, has said that while vast majority of Indian businesses surveyed (91%) claim they have set targets to reach net zero, with 51% of them viewing these targets as “highly achievable”, ironically, most of them (78%) consider sustainability as a cost to business rather than opportunity.
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Anti-Rupala Rajputs 'have no support' of numerically strong Kshatriya communities

Personally, I have no love lost for Purshottam Rupala, though I have known him ever since I was posted as the Times of India representative in Gandhinagar in 1997, from where I was supposed to do political reporting. In news after he made the statement that 'maharajas' succumbed to foreign rulers, including the British, and even married off their daughters them, there have been large Rajput rallies against him for “insulting” the community.
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India 'not keen' on legally binding global treaty to reduce plastic production

  Even as offering lip-service to the United Nations Environment Agency (UNEA) for the need to curb plastic production, the Government of India appears reluctant in reducing the production of plastic. A senior participant at the UNEP’s  fourth session  of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4), which took place in Ottawa in April last week, told a plastics pollution seminar that India, along with China and Russia, did not want any legally binding agreement for curbing plastic pollution.
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'Modi govt's assault on dissent': Foreign funds of top finance NGO blocked

  In a surprise move, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has cancelled the foreign funding license of the well-known advocacy group, Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), known for critically examining India's finance and banking sectors from human rights and environmental angle.
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'28% rise in sedition cases': Top global NGO alliance rates India's civil space 'repressed'

  Rating India's civic space as  repressed , Civicus, a global civil society alliance, in its new  report  submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) on the state of civic space in the country has said that the use of sedition law against the Modi government’s critics continues. "Under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sedition cases have increased by 28 per cent with over 500 cases against more than 7,000 people", it says.
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Urban Naxal to Amit Shah, AAP Bharuch candidate tops ADR's Gujarat criminal cases list

  Refusing to go beyond the data released by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the Lok Sabha candidates’ own declarations of their criminal record, educational qualification and assets, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a top-notch advocacy group, has declared Aam Aadmi Party candidate Chaitar Vasava, 35, having the highest number of criminal cases of all those fighting the electoral battle on 26 seats in Gujarat.
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