Chitra Subramaniam
TheNewsMinute
Bengaluru, KA, India
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Past articles by Chitra:
A For Apathy, B For Blabber And C For Cancer – Say Cancer, it will set you free
My acquaintance with cancer started abruptly like almost everything in my life, in the middle. I was in a slew of projects in India and Switzerland. One fine morning in Delhi in the summer of 2011, I was unable to get up from the bed and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The distance was four steps. Our daughter Nitya, who had returned late from a modelling assignment, was still asleep. → Read More
As Nirav Modi cocks a snook, where is New Delhi's artillery?
Explanations by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) about how Nirav Modi landed in the group photograph in Davos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a select group of Indian business people and a handful of bureaucrats, do not wash. While one says the man was not on the official list, the other says he was not part of the official delegation.… → Read More
India’s biggest financial fraud is based on a product with no international regulation
The story of a diamond has more faces than a cut diamond. A diamond it not a commodity despite being a scarce natural resource. There is no international standardisation or exchange for information about the stone. People turn to a private newsletter called Rapoport published out of New York to get diamond news. You can be sold glass that mimics a diamond by some of the top jewellers in the… → Read More
Bofors: The Swedes and the Swiss are willing to assist, but will India drop the ball?
There are two clear sides to the Bofors-India case. One is the evidence of bribes and the other is the political side that is the elaborate three-country effort to cover up of the trail of bribes, loot and lies. → Read More
When the Congress govt turned India’s External Affairs Minister into a delivery boy
The invitation to write this piece is an indirect one and it comes from the Office of Rahul Gandhi. In a tweet addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, “Dear PM, Welcome to Switzerland! Please tell Davos why 1% of India’s population gets 73% of its wealth. I’m attaching a report for your ready reference.” The report was from Oxfam, carried by website The Wire. → Read More
Davos: People more keen to hear PM Modi than they want to about India
Time does not have time for time at Davos. Almost every business person or political leader who attends the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) summit at the Swiss ski village has a diary overflowing with meetings, some set a year ago. Every year, a global leader addresses the plenary session. In a few hours from now, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver the plenary address. Many people I… → Read More
How does a bald woman with one breast date a man?
A single mum with two children, she was telling me about Christmas and the holiday season as she glanced through gossip magazines. “So, it’s an arranged marriage,” she said, turning towards where I was sitting, holding up pictures of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. “And that’s what I was being talked into – meet this guy in London.” We were all hoping she’d meet someone nice and kind, like… → Read More
Pakistan, Kulbhushan Jadhav and the public undressing of India
Like millions of Indians, I watched the sham that was the meeting between Kulbhushan Jadhav and his wife and mother who travelled to Pakistan earlier this week to meet him. Like millions of Indians I asked why the meeting took place in a prison-like setting with Jadhav and his family separated by a glass wall. Pakistan calls Jadhav a spy, but has failed to prove in an an international court so… → Read More
Taslima Nasreen’s fashionable outrage and perennial victimhood give her away
How do you know what a country has in its gut? I mean what are your points of reference when you explain an event to the world about a country of over 1.2 billion people who speak numerous tongues, represent all religions and socio-economic bands and all of whom want to seek their place in the sun for themselves and their loved ones at the same time? Are echo chambers your principle watering… → Read More
‘I will fight this, Pak sheltering terrorists’: Baloch leader denied asylum by Switzerland
The Swiss government this week rejected the asylum request of Brahumdagh Bugti, President of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP). Bugti, who lives near Geneva, has been waiting for the past seven years for word on his asylum request. A few days earlier, his UK-based brother-in-law Mehran Marri was not allowed to enter Switzerland, a country he has been visiting several times a year for over a… → Read More
Give ‘Padmavati’ a chance, and stop insulting artistes and their creativity
Ugly, and how. And we’ve not seen or heard the last of it. For the past week and this one, there has been such ugliness and emptiness about the film Padmavati, it is disturbing. It shines a light – or absence of it – on Indians. The film’s director Sanjay Leela Bhansali – who was earlier beaten and forced to move the shooting site – continues to be called by the choicest abuses including some… → Read More
The Arvind Swami interview: Nationalism, GST, demonetisation and more
Arvind Swami is a Mani Ratnam find with signature and critically acclaimed films like Thalapathi, Roja and Bombay. And while that should say all about him, it doesn’t. His early career choice was medicine. Scion of a reputed south-Indian business family, he also carried that mantle till his passion – films - beckoned. A businessperson and a versatile thinker’s actor, Swami spoke to TNM’s Chitra… → Read More
Gauri Lankesh murder: The left jumped, the right jumped and death jumped the highest
The left jumped. We know who killed Gauri Lankesh. Kalburgi angle, rationalist angle, similar gun and modus operandi, fascists, right-wingers have taken over India, press freedom is dead. Murder, gun, press freedom all neatly aligned and maligned. Police protection to be granted to people - some intellectuals and prominent people who oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The image of the grieving… → Read More
Being called a slut is not empowering for women
It was so obvious that it had to be said. → Read More
Gauri Lankesh murder: Media’s unhealthy swiftness to judge at the expense of accuracy
Like most who may read the following lines, I have closely followed events after the brutal assassination of Gauri Lankesh. The only thing that seems clear to me is that it is a mafia-like job, carried out with cold precision in the heart of a city. Two people come on a motorbike to kill the person and two more follow on another bike to make sure the job is complete. It happens, just like this,… → Read More
Ram Rahim verdict: The deadly rapist is safe, but unknown Indians will die
We are all safe ahead of tomorrow when the quantum of punishment for rapist Ram Rahim Singh will be pronounced. Bandobast has been going on in full swing in New Delhi and we are monitoring it from our gated communities and sending messages to each other. The national capital is in a shutdown mode, lest someone important gets hurt. Important people getting hurt is important. → Read More
We elect governments to serve us, they have no business usurping our voice
Kashmir to Kanyakumari is not a Bollywood song only. It is India's reality, a joint responsibility each of us bear. It is high time India’s regional leaders speak about national issues that rile the country and for which solutions can be sought only if we speak as one. It is my fervent belief that responsible political discourse and dialogue will unite India in ways we have not yet achieved. → Read More
Exclusive: A quid-pro-quo between Rajiv Gandhi and Olof Palme on the Bofors payments?
Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his Swedish colleague Prime Minister Olof Palme discussed the details of a financial quid-pro-quo before the Bofors gun deal was signed in March 1986. Bofors would pay money to a foundation in Sweden to make it easier for payments to be made to Indians and others. → Read More
Improving access to medicines: Simply going after Big Pharma is not helping anyone
The city was Geneva and the setting was a meeting with Indian health authorities, including the Union Minister, who were attending the annual meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Two of us from The News Minute were discussing with the Indian delegation issues relating to access, delinking cost and price of drugs, regulatory systems including monitoring in India and the criticism that… → Read More
The G 20 summit in Germany: Piqued, puzzled or a dud?
As a gathering of the world’s top dogs go, the G20 summit currently underway in Germany must clearly be the non-event of the year. Experts will try to find text in sub texts and language they can latch on to, but I have covered enough such meets to know this one is going to be a dud. Too many clashes, too little faith in each other and an unguided missile from Washington has left many wary,… → Read More