Tag: Scandeep

Can a bureaucrat – or anyone anyone holding a public office for that matter – eject a reporter from a briefing for the media on the grounds of ‘biased’ coverage? Or pick and choose which media outlet s/he would talk to? The answer, I am afraid, has to be an emphatic and unambiguous ‘No’! It […]

One of the major factors behind the landslide victory for Naveen Patnaik and his party in the 2014 elections was the overwhelming support of women. Naveen himself acknowledged as much in his first reaction after the win. Though the exact extent of women’s support for the BJD in that election is not known, estimates put […]

The media loves nothing more than speculation. Anticipating and second guessing the supposed moves of political parties and leaders is what it revels in. In doing so, it is never deterred by the absence of an official word on such a move. [In fact, it dreads the ‘official’ word, because as and when it comes, […]

The stars of the business world, who descended on Bhubaneswar for the second edition of the Make in Odisha conclave, must have been quite impressed with what they saw in the Smart City: freshly coated roads, smartly dressed traffic personnel, the swanky hotels, the glitzy shopping arcades and, last but not the least, the hi-tech […]

The virtual confirmation on Sunday that the tiger killed by poachers in the Debrigarh forests in Bargarh district was a Royal Bengal Tiger (RBT) – and not a leopard, as the Forest minister and the PCCF (Wildlife) had sought to pass it off as – raises the inevitable question: why is the Forest department so […]

As the sordid details of the murky goings-on inside the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) keep tumbling out one after another, they help answer many of the questions that have been bothering those who have followed its track record over the years. Questions like why does the premier investigating agency, which boasts of the best […]

“I was asked to write about the Oriyas (Odias). What is there to write about these poor chaps? Ever since they got a thrashing at the hands of Ashoka in the battle of Kalinga, they have been a dejected lot. Now all they have with them are a lot of pots (Patras), big pots (Mahapatras) […]

With a large number of people living within or close to forests, the phenomenon of humans being killed by wild animals is not exactly uncommon in India. Human greed and rapacity has seen the country’s forest cover shrink rapidly since Independence, forcing wild animals to stray into human habitations in search of food with increasing […]

When something happens twice, it is coincidence. But when it happens, without fail, every single time on a dozen or so different occasions, there has to be something more than coincidence to explain it away. A few years ago, I returned from a party late at night and went straight to bed. On waking up […]

My first meeting with the man (it was more of an ‘encounter’ than a meeting, actually) was of the kind that remains etched in the mind for a lifetime. I had just joined as a trainee journalist in Eastern Media Limited (EML), which brought out ‘Sambad’, the first ‘morning’ daily in Odia. Since the house […]

Pre-election ‘surveys’ are the flavour of the season. And true to form, we have worked ourselves into a tizzy over the findings of two back to back surveys – the India Today ‘Political Stock Exchange’ survey and ABP C-Voter ‘Desh ka Mood’ poll – coming within a week of each other. While the India Today […]

Coming as it does so soon after the disastrous England tour, the commanding victory against the West Indies by an innings and 272 runs at Rajkot today should have lifted the spirits of the Indian Test cricket fan (this writer certainly counts himself as one!), despondent after the merciless drubbing in Old Blighty. Instead, it […]

Act first, think later. That appears to be the golden principle the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has been following religiously. Any hope that the change of guard at the top would put the messy affairs of the 12th century shrine back in order was rudely shattered on Wednesday when hundreds of angry residents of […]

Politicians must be heaving a huge sigh of relief at the Supreme Court decision to lob the ball to the court of Parliament on the question of disqualification of candidates charge sheeted in criminal cases. They know Parliament is their ‘playground’ and they can frame their own rules of the game. Many of them must […]

By all accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went farther in his criticism of the Naveen Patnaik government at the two back to back public meetings in Talcher and Jharsuguda on Saturday than he has done since coming to power in May, 2014. The rally in Jharsuguda, in particular, was significant because it marked the first […]