RajivSpeak

The BJP’s massive electoral win in West Bengal is being interpreted across political persuasions — except, of course, by the BJP itself — as the result of the alleged deletion of around 90 lakh voters from the electoral rolls during the controversial intensive revision process. This may well be true, given my own experience in Gujarat regarding the shoddy manner in which electoral revisions have often been conducted. In West Bengal, there also appeared to be a political angle to the exercise. But I am not interested in discussing that here, as enough has already appeared in the media on the subject.

Currently, I am watching the American serial The Affair . While it offers a very interesting exposure to broken relationships in the United States, in the middle of the tenth episode of the second season its main character, Noah Solloway — divorced from his wife after falling in love with a waitress — has a therapy session with a psychiatrist. Here, Noah, who happens to be a celebrated novelist with two published novels and a third in progress, makes an interesting observation: all great men are not good men.

Recently, I wrote a story titled "India's Muslim, Dalit segregation nears US Black-White levels: Chicago study", based on a working paper authored by Sam Asher, Kiritarth Jha, Paul Novosad, Anjali Adukia, and Brandon Tan. The paper documents how Scheduled Caste (SC) and Muslim communities in India are concentrated in neighborhoods with fewer schools, clinics, and basic infrastructure.

After I was transferred as the Times of India representative in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat capital, in 1997, one of the many changes I noticed in my interaction with state officialdom and politicians was the kind of courtesies extended to me—even by those I would rarely meet. One such courtesy came in the form of a phrase I knew nothing about:  Micchami Dukkadam .

I receive a lot of unsolicited material in my line of work — op-eds, press releases, open letters, manifestos. But the document that landed in my inbox recently gave me pause in a way that most don't. It came formatted as a formal submission, signed by a Chandigarh resident called Sumeet, addressed to me in my capacity as someone who works with editorial and public interest content. The subject line read: Submission as Cyber and Human Rights Volunteer – Cyber Ethics and Human Rights Concerns.

Following my recent blog on former IAS bureaucrat Atanu Chakraborty’s sudden exit as non-executive chairman of HDFC Bank, a few colleagues from the Gujarat cadre — mostly those I interacted with during my Gandhinagar stint (1997–2012) as the Times of India representative — reacted rather sharply. Most of them sent their responses directly on WhatsApp, touching upon on the merits and demerits of Chakraborty’s controversial move. One former IAS officer, a Dalit, however, went further, raising a broader question: why do some officials like Chakraborty secure plum post-retirement assignments, while others are overlooked?

  A recent report published in the British media outlet  The Guardian , titled “Workers carved the largest modern Hindu temple in the west. Now, some have incurable lung disease,” took me back to my visits to the  New Jersey mandir —first in 2022, when it was still under construction, though parts of it were open to visitors, and again in 2024, after its completion.

I was a little amused by the abrupt March 17 resignation of Atanu Chakraborty—a Gujarat cadre IAS officer of the 1985 batch who retired in 2020—as chairman of HDFC Bank. Much of what may have led to his decision to quit this ostensibly high post—actually a non-executive, part-time role—is by now well known. I followed most of it online with considerable interest, partly because I had interacted with him umpteen times during my stint as The Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar from 1997 to 2012.

Following  my recent blog on Dalit cuisine —where I argued, citing several studies, that it is deeply shaped by the caste system and the history of untouchability—I received an intriguing response on a private WhatsApp chat from a retired Gujarat-cadre bureaucrat. A likeable and thoughtful official, I have known him since the early 2000s, when I was covering the Gujarat Sachivalaya for The Times of India.

“What has gone wrong with the Congress? Why is it making such stupid demands? That’s the only reason why none trusts the party,” exclaimed someone close to me after reading a Gujarati daily report that the Congress had demanded the cow be declared India’s national animal.  

  A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that  appeared  in the British weekly  The Economist . Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “ sattvik  food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.

  The other day, a discussion broke out among ten friends on love marriages—a contentious issue in Gujarat following moves in the corridors of power to regulate them by making parental consent mandatory. One of us claimed that, unlike in the past, nearly 70 percent of weddings today are love marriages. Another person, who had eloped to get married years ago, remarked, “Problems exist everywhere, whether it is a love marriage or an arranged one.”

  This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

It is always sad when a journalist colleague passes away — more so when that person has remained firm in his journalistic moorings. Compared to many others, I did not know R.K. Misra, who passed away on February 23 after a long illness, very intimately, but we interacted occasionally over the years.

The other day, I was talking with Martin Macwan, a well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader. He revealed to me an interesting chapter of the Gandhian movement in Gujarat — how Ravishankar Maharaj (1884–1984), a prominent Gandhian social reformer of the state, played a pivotal role in the struggle for temple entry for Dalits (then referred to as Harijans) in the late 1940s.

Decades ago, when I was a student at Delhi University, the Left-wing student organisations, one of which I was a part of, would hold a highly negative view of NGOs. They would go so far as to castigate them as imperialist or CIA agents -- just because they were foreign-funded, by bodies such as Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace.

On the evening of February 14, after banking hours, I received a strange SMS from Bank of India (BOI)—where I maintain a very small, largely inactive account. I had opened it years ago simply because a branch was located near my home. However, finding their services quite poor, I rarely use it anymore.

I am compelled to refer to a blog by communications expert Tushar Panchal titled "The Grip, the Choke, and the Follow-Through." Forwarded to me by a friend, it calls Rahul Gandhi's Parliament intervention on February 11, 2026, the "most strategically constructed speech of his parliamentary career."

  By Rajiv Shah  More than a decade ago, when I was with The Times of India, I used to write a regular weekly column called True Lies. The column—which still continues—was mainly about gossip surrounding Gujarat government bureaucrats, though I occasionally wrote about ministers as well. In that column, I would often refer to what IAS officials described as their informal weekly Monday morning tit-a-tat over tea.

    The other day, I visited what is being billed as the  Ahmedabad International Flower Show 2026 , currently underway at the  Sabarmati Riverfront Event Centre . This was my second visit to the Ahmedabad flower show. I went with my NRI friends, who remarked that the display this year was far superior to what they had seen when they visited Ahmedabad around the same time last year.