Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express. He has been vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and president, Centre Policy Research. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU. He has written on intellectual history, political theory, law, India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize. Follow @pbmehta

May 16, 2005 00:00 IST
Now that the April Foreign Policy euphoria is over, the party poopers are out with full force. The question is again being asked: can we tru...
Mon, May 16, 2005
April 25, 2005 00:00 IST
A commission for Administrative Reforms sounds like a good idea. But such reforms are often an exercise akin to a dog trying to catch its ow...
Mon, Apr 25, 2005
March 25, 2005 00:52 IST
Aspects of Narendra Modi’s politics are reprehensible. His conduct during the Gujarat riots was condemnable. The lack of remorse he has...
Fri, Mar 25, 2005
March 23, 2005 00:00 IST
It is a pity that the term “non-alignment” has not been able to transcend its Cold War baggage. The term, in its core meaning, ref...
Wed, Mar 23, 2005
March 10, 2005 00:07 IST
There has been a quiet revolution underway in India’s approach to the world. The central elements of this revolution were simply but po...
Thu, Mar 10, 2005
February 17, 2005 00:00 IST
Anara Gupta, beauty queen. S.A.R. Geelani, academic. Shankaracharya, spiritual leader. Vicky Thakur, suspected kidnapper. Jammu, Delhi, Chen...
Thu, Feb 17, 2005
February 11, 2005 00:00 IST
The crisis in Nepal has brought home India’s limitations as a major power. Not only did the King blatantly ignore India’s advice a...
Fri, Feb 11, 2005
December 29, 2004 00:00 IST
Although at one level it was a case of adolescent indiscretion, the afterlife of the MMS clip case captures many anxieties about the social ...
Wed, Dec 29, 2004
December 09, 2004 00:00 IST
There is a story about a professor who taught a class on “Left and Right in Economic Thought.” Like many good professors, he delin...
Thu, Dec 09, 2004
November 27, 2004 00:00 IST
Faced with a genuine problem of quality control, a national accreditation council was set up. This has turned out to be a non-starter for ma...
Sat, Nov 27, 2004
November 26, 2004 00:00 IST
The growth of higher education in India is seriously hampered by the dead weight of hypocritical socialist pieties on the one hand and impro...
Fri, Nov 26, 2004
November 24, 2004 00:00 IST
The current disarray within the BJP raises a profound question. Has its historical moment passed? During the ’90s the BJP managed to ex...
Wed, Nov 24, 2004
November 15, 2004 00:00 IST
The relationship between Bangla-desh and India has become a sorry tale of mutual incomprehension, fragile egos and self defeating behaviour....
Mon, Nov 15, 2004
November 06, 2004 00:00 IST
George Mitchell once said that “although he’s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.” The me...
Sat, Nov 06, 2004
October 28, 2004 00:00 IST
The Indian judiciary is an institution trapped in a myth about its own power. The Supreme Court has, on a rather slender constitutional basi...
Thu, Oct 28, 2004
October 13, 2004 00:00 IST
Jacques Derrida, who died on October 8 at the age of 74, was a remarkable figure in 20th century letters. Deconstruction, an intellectual mo...
Wed, Oct 13, 2004
October 08, 2004 00:00 IST
As relations between India and Pakistan improve, the diplomatic and political challenges for India will get tougher rather than easier. In m...
Fri, Oct 08, 2004
September 02, 2004 00:00 IST
It is almost impossible to read any public references to Indian history these days without feeling a profound sense of claustrophobia. Polem...
Thu, Sep 02, 2004
August 04, 2004 00:00 IST
Should there be a law debarring charge-sheeted politicians from holding public office? This debate is marked by two forms of disingenuousnes...
Wed, Aug 04, 2004
July 18, 2004 00:00 IST
The dominant academic historiography of modern India has, in recent times, been marked by what can best be described as a form of hyper self...
Sun, Jul 18, 2004
July 15, 2004 00:00 IST
The Andhra Pradesh government’s announcement of a five percent job reservation for Muslims is treading down a dangerous legal and polit...
Thu, Jul 15, 2004
December 21, 2003 00:00 IST
The great Hindi writer, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, in a brilliant essay Jabki Dimag Khali Hai (When the Mind is Empty) published in 1939, outlin...
Sun, Dec 21, 2003
July 02, 2003 00:00 IST
Any increase in activity over finding a settlement to the Ayodhya imbroglio, produces more anxiety than clarity. The circumstances that have...
Wed, Jul 02, 2003
May 09, 2003 00:00 IST
When the history of India’s reforms during the nineties is written, scholars will blame the slow pace of reform on many factors: The ve...
Fri, May 09, 2003



