Today is the 231st birth anniversary of Ranjit Singh, first MahaRaja of the Sikh Empire in north India. He was born on 13th November in 1780 at Gujranwala (now in Pakistan) and had his first taste of battle when he was barely ten! At the time of his birth, much of the land in the region of five rivers was split amongst various Sikh confederates (misl). There was no central authority, no dominant misl and little coordination amongst the various confederates.  By the time he was in his late teens,  the foundations …

How many of you noticed this piece of “news” from about 2 months ago (emphasis added)?
The Centre is proposing to introduce reservation for Muslims in educational institutions and employment on the lines of Andhra Pradesh government, Union Minister for Law and Justice Salman Khursheed indicated in Hyderabad on Sunday.
Talking to reporters here after participating in a ‘Solidarity Meeting on Palestine’ organised by the Indo-Arab League here, he said: “I don’t know whether it is a Bill. There will be separate reservation. It is not necessary to have another Bill. It …

I doubt many of you noticed two innocuous words in a tribute to Bhupen Hazarika in Firstpost earlier this week. The words (highlighted below) were “distant” and “mainland“. The “distant” was a reference to Assam and the “mainland” was supposed to be India.

I turned to long-time blog reader Dinesh for help.  In an email, I asked him if he could help with his whiz research skills to make the case that Assam is as distant from Delhi as Andhra Pradesh and less so than Tamil Nadu and Kerala and to figure …

Thanks to my friend and FTI colleague Sanjeev Sabhlok for this excerpt. It comes from a speech by Matt Radley that Sanjeev has posted in full (emphasis added).
…. Now before you all rush for the exits, and I know it is traditional to walk out on speakers who do not toe the line on climate at the RSA – I saw it happen to Bjorn Lomborg last year when he gave the Prince Philip lecture – let me be quite clear. I am not a “denier”.
I fully accept that carbon dioxide …

In which a “leading” media organisation drops all pretence of unbiased reporting…
Courtesy Jnsbmi, here is a ToI story (emphasis added). Notice the headline and the tweet in which it was mentioned:
Gujarat accounts for 6% of India’s dubious bank transactions
Nov 2, 2011, 12.46AM IST TNN [ Ankur Jain ]
Gujarat has generated the fourth highest number of reports relating to dubious banking transactions in the last four financial years, according to a govt report.
AHMEDABAD: There is something more than that meets the eye with financial transactions in the state. According to …

Here is the set of slides that formed the backdrop of my talk on Politics, Governance and Entrepreneurship at IIM Indore last month…
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Politics, Governance & Enterpreneurship
View more presentations from B Shantanu

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The complete video of the talk is here.