Tag Archive for ‘Shekhar Gupta’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Shekhar Gupta'

Mahinda Rajapaksa: ‘The war is over’

Published

on June 1, 2009

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Shekhar Gupta walks the talk on Prabhakaran, the war with the LTTE and the way forward with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in The Indian Express:

SG: Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. I am Shekhar Gupta in Colombo’s Presidential Palace and my guest once again President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

MR: My pleasure

Welcome to Walk the Talk and very different circumstances from our last conversation.

MR: Quite. Yes, because when you came last time, I think it was about two years…two years ago.

SG: Less than, Less than one-and-a-half years ago.

MR: Less than one-and-a-half years ago.

SG: and I will tell you why I say one-and-a-half years.

MR: Yes, then of course we were not a, I would say a, united…unitary country now it its because earlier, when you came last time, North was…North and East I think was controlled by the LTTE terrorist. Now, we are free of terrorism.

SG: You said you are a unitary country, but a federal unitary country I hope.Because last time in fact, when we had a conversation you said that in one-and-a-half years you said there will be peace and there will be no LTTE.

MR: Yes.

SG: I said in one-and-a-half years, I reminded you, because it is still two months to one-and-a-half years.

MR: Yes

SG: That situation has come about even faster than you had…even you had imagined.

MR: That’s right. Yes, because of our…armed forces were so committed for the fight.

SG: Tell us a little bit about the final phases of the battle.

MR: Yes.

SG: How did it progress? What happened? When did the breakthrough come?

MR: No, from the time after we walked into Madhu , that is the, North-West of the…

SG: Right…island.

MR: Island. We were stuck there for about eight to nine months. Then we… it was a, just a, walk-over, I would say. But we knew after we went to Killinochi, I mean, we were, you know, through.

SG: what is the biggest mistake that Prabhakaran made in this.

MR: Well, to kill Rajiv Gandhi.

SG: To kill Rajiv Gandhi.

MR: That was…

The 26/11 effect: raging against middle class rage

Published

asianwindow

on December 7, 2008

in Society

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As they light candles and wave placards post 26/11, Mumbai’s angry elite come under attack from a variety of sources. In the New York Times, Somini Sengupta

Last Wednesday, an extraordinary public interest lawsuit was filed in this city’s highest court. It charged that the government had lagged in its constitutional duty to protect its citizens’ right to life, and it pressed the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.

The lawsuit was striking mainly for the people behind it: investment bankers, corporate lawyers and representatives of some of India’s largest companies, which have their headquarters here in the country’s financial capital, also known as Bombay. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the city’s largest business association, joined as a petitioner. It was the first time it had lent its name to litigation in the public interest.

In Hindustan Times, Vir Sanghvi says middle class anger is spinning out of control

I wrote last week that I had never known such anger in urban India as we have witnessed after the Bombay attacks. Over a week after the attacks ended, the fury has not dissipated. Rather it has spun almost entirely out of control.

I have no problems with anger. It is often the precursor to change. Unless Indians make it clear that they are mad as hell and are not going to take it any longer, the system will never change.

Elsewhere, in The Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta tries to understand this rage

You’d be surprised to realise how it is much more likely you would get away with saying something entirely facetious and silly, but get into trouble when you try making a serious, sincere point. That, at least, has been the story of my life. At a series of public functions in Pakistan several years ago, I said Pakistan was in many ways as imperfect a dictatorship as India was an imperfect democracy: the central argument being that just as India had not been able to accord all its citizens all the freedoms that a democracy of this quality should have, Pakistan had not quite been able to deny their people all the freedoms that a classical dictatorship should have.

On the record: Jeffrey Archer

Published

asianwindow

on June 2, 2008

in Books

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Bestselling author Jeffrey Archer is a man of many parts — he was captain of the athletics team at Oxford, he ran for his country, and was a Conservative MP at 29. He wrote his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, in 1976. Since then he has kept producing works that always topped the charts. His stint in jail for perjury saw him write a well-received prisoner’s diary, and, adapting the tales he was told by fellow prisoners, he put together a short-story collection called Cat O’ Nine Tails. Archer was recently in India to promote his latest book A Prisoner of Birth. In an interview with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk, he speaks about cricket, of which he is an avid fan, about politics in the UK, and about getting on in life without being in the dumps over the mistakes one makes.

Wonderful to have you here in a bookshop in Gurgaon, Landmark, in a mall.

Yes, which wouldn’t have been. When I first came to India 15 years ago, there wouldn’t have been a mall.

•You said you never came to India because you were never invited. You need an invite to come to India?

I thank Landmark very kindly. They said, ‘We would like to do a proper tour. We know you have been to India, but we would like to take you around the country because you’ve got a lot of fans here.’ And I said, ‘Well, I have seen the figures from the Kane & Abel days, which is 30 years ago. And they said, ‘Oh, they are buying more now that you are even more popular. So we would like you to come over.’ So I had just done Australia for the fifth time, and I had just done America for the seventh time.

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