Quotes from Barkha Dutt

We will unconditionally worship Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, partly because we approve of their well-mannered modesty. They are non-threatening, good hearted blokes - the boys we take home to Momma.

Most of us marvel at the ingenuity and imaginativeness of sting operations, defend their right to exist and will argue that if well-used, they are an invaluable tool for justice.

Textbook journalism everywhere in the world has always frowned upon the sting as a tool of reporting.

The army's original job description was to protect borders, but a demanding country depends on it for everything else too, from rebuilding bridges after a tsunami to keeping the peace when religious riots erupt.

Yes, fear and repression may be permanent citizens in Narendra Modi's Gujarat.

The hysterical competitiveness in the media bazaar has subverted the traditional hierarchy of news.

When Hindustan Motors rolled out the first Ambassador Car in 1957 its sturdy body, rounded contours and Mother Earth simplicity immediately bagged it a place in our collective consciousness.

For many Indians, their future as global players is linked to the American dream.

There are only a handful of educational institutions that can be called emblems of a Thinking India.

I'm not a big fan of government interference in most matters.

When Sania Mirza says she feels hurt or fed up at constantly grabbing the headlines for the wrong reasons, it's an understandable reaction. But when she goes ahead to say she doesn't want to play in India anymore, we can't help thinking it's the sort of thing you'd expect a defeatist to say.

This Right vs Left fault line has been drawn through all of our nations. In India too, your political choice has come to define all of you. And if you fail the ideological purity test of one or the other side, you are immediately branded a traitor.

Whether it's Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana or Odisha, we have seen similar patterns - hostile local politics transform into conciliation of some kind after the state elections.

Most of us in the media are, by and large, sentimental about our national identity, but comfortable enough in our skins as Indians, to be deeply self-critical. The problem arises when loyalty to India gets mixed up with loyalty to the government of the day.

If the travels of a country were to be chronicled by its cars, in the journey from the Ambassador to the Nano is, perhaps, the story of India's evolution as a nation.

Every time that zealots clash with the zany and Religion and Freedom take opposite positions across the trenches, the issue becomes larger than the individual.

People care when service is sluggish and comes from an arrogance and complacency that often besets those who know they can never lose their jobs.

Every institution of India - politicians, journalists and corporate chieftains - comes within the purview of the judiciary but when it comes to auditing their own conscience, judges want everyone else to stay out.

As women, many of us have internalised our lives as a prolonged version of boot camp, a sort of Darwinian call to toughen up or perish. As young women, we are terrified that men we consider our mentors can turn out to be monsters.

National security is that old rabbit that's pulled out of the hat every time politicians run out of other tricks to keep you in check.

For a man once called the Indian Obama by the historian and public intellectual Ramachandra Guha, the diminishing of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar could not be more dramatic.

Apart from democracy, globalisation and economic liberalism is our 20th century area of commonality with the U.S., the burgeoning numbers of skilled Indian workers in the U.S. and the outsourcing of American jobs to Indians who never even had to leave their desks, makes us feel that the relationship can eventually be a two-way street of equals.

For decades, the Left has occupied a special place in the minds of educated Indians - outside of the two states (Bengal and Kerala) where it has a political presence and is therefore treated like any other political party.

Hinduism especially - in the absence of codified rituals or a book of rules to circumscribe it - has always functioned as part philosophy, part mythology, leaving it open to competing and contradictory interpretations.