Nawaz Sharif pressed all the right buttons when he spoke about India while campaigning and especially when he had a microphone in front of him. A Pakistani leader who believes in peace with India does not do so for love of India. he believes the cost of hostility is too high a price to afford. Chanakya writes.

The BJP leadership has erred very badly in not building up leaders in the south. So it will have to depend on capricious allies in the region,
Chanakya writes.

India shining was a slogan that went too far. But a sense of India tarnished would not be off the mark to describe the national mood today.
Chanakya writes

Sushilkumar Shinde is amiable, is a bit of a bumbler, he’s got the gift of the gaffe, he is loyal to those who gave him his position, he is unperturbed by the effect his words have on people.
Principles - that is a word you are going to hear a lot more as parties begin re-evaluating their positions on alliances with the 2014 elections looming ever nearer. Chanakya writes.

If politicians cannot lace their speeches with sophisticated humour, they should stick to the point and leave comedy to those who know the art.
Chanakya writes.
In Mamata Banerjee's Bengal, we have women being raped and our didi feels that this is part of a Red plot to sully her fair name, writes Chanakya.

Do we have a Kashmir policy at all? Was it necessary for the interlocutors to go to Jammu and Kashmir if their views found no favour with either the state government or the Central government?
Chanakya writes.

‘We have to work it out in such a way that it ultimately is in the interest of the nation.” If this sounds vague to you, I don’t blame you, writes
Chanakya.

At the end of the day, prison life is largely a miserable, brutish and subterranean one. it is one which merits the attention of experts.
Chanakya writes.

Nothing helps Narendra Modi more than making him out to be a victim. Commentary in India has been running in Modi’s favour, I would guess, by a ratio of nine to one, writes
Chanakya.

Budgets are made around a central assumption: how fast will the economy grow next year? Chidambaram does his numbers well and his secondary assumptions on tax buoyancy and expenditure compression are very likely watertight.
Chanakya writes.

A productive and calm Parliament session is the least that politicians owe to the people who have to wake up daily to some scam or horrific outrage. It gives people an infinite sense of reassurance,
Chanakya writes.

Defence sales will always be murky. One can only take steps to mitigate corruption. The real issue is: does the gun shoot straight?
Chanakya writes.

When Finance Minister P Chidambaram asserts that the budget will be a responsible one, you can be reasonably assured it will be, writes
Chanakya.