BHASKAR GHOSE-Frontline

More stories by this author

Members of the All India Mahila Samskritik Sanghatan (AIMSS) protest against the molestation of a girl in public in Guwahati and demand that the government implement laws to protect women, in Bangalore in July.-K. MURALI KUMAR

New assertiveness

Women are demanding their place in the sun and usually getting it, but there are also packs of louts who see them as easy prey, so clashes are inevita

AT A LATE night party in Visakhapatnam, a file photograph. Young people today have lifestyles that do not always conform to older, accepted ways.-K.R. DEEPAK

Shaping the future

It is young people who will ultimately determine what Indian society will be like in the later years of this century.

Blot on Visva-Bharati

The first institution that Tagore started is in the news for all the wrong reasons.

News of the arrest of Abu Jindal for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks and his return to India led to a frenzy of discussions on TV channels and huge stories in newspapers, all of them quoting unnamed 'sources', obviously from the intelligence agencies. Here, a typical scene before any media conference.-V.V. KRISHNAN

Spooks & the media

A lot of what has come out after the arrest of Abu Jindal that was attributed to sources can compromise the countrys information-gathering systems.

Supporters of Anna Hazare in Mumbai during Team Anna's campaign for a Lokpal Bill in December last year.-PTI

Looking for values

The new generations of Indians in public life do not seem to believe in the value of moral principles, which the leaders of the freedom movement swore

GORKHA JANMUKTI MORCHA supporters block the road in Darjeeling town during a bandh in January 2011 demanding a separate Gorkhaland state.-AJAY SHA

Narrowing identities

The notion of India and its diverse nature seems to be coming under strain.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen (left) and Joint Commissioner of Police (Headquarters) Jawed Shamim addressing journalists at the State Secretariat in Kolkata on February 20.-SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

A tale of two officers

How two IPS officers, one in Andhra Pradesh and the other in West Bengal, were transferred after their principled actions turned controversial.

A SEVERELY MALNOURISHED two-year-old child with her mother at the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre in Shivpuri district, Madhya Pradesh, on February 1. There are two periods in a child's growth when the need for high amounts of nutrition is crucial for its development, mental as well as physical - one when it is between seven and nine years old and the other as it steps into its teens.-ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS

Elections & beyond

One can say with a degree of certainty that corruption was not really the main issue in this round of Assembly elections in five States.

AT THE INDIA Gate in New Delhi. The diversity that Delhi has, with communities from all over the country making it a mini India, is itself its biggest and most dangerous liability.-SANDEEP SAXENA

Search for identity

The one thing that Delhi lacks, which other cities have, is an underpinning of a shared culture, however diffuse that may be.

UDYOG BHAVAN, NEW Delhi, which houses the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry. When liberalisation freed industry in the 1990s from the vice-like grip of bureaucratic procedures, the bureaucracy lost its control from which it derived the power to make money.-THE HINDU ARCHIVES

Legion strikes

In a manner that attracted no attention, the bureaucracy has managed to reintroduce red tape into its procedures in the later phase of liberalisation.

MIGRANT LABOURERS AT the Bhubaneswar railway station. Except for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, nothing has been done for the rural people in all these years.-PTI

Inaction as policy

It is time for the political executive to take stock of what it has achieved in the years it has been in office.

Looking back

In the new year let there be more transparency in decision-making and discussions, unlike 2011, which had more than its fair share of crises.