All stories by Prem Panicker
Did Chances Of A Trump Win Spook Bezos?
Rediff.com18 hours agoDid Jeff Bezos decide against endorsing Harris because it would hurt his business interests? Only God and Bezos know, and neither of them are talking, notes Prem Panicker.
How Do We Prepare For LA 2028? We Don't.
Rediff.com15 Aug 2024You don't prep for 2028 but for 2040, or even 2044. Sustained sporting excellence is based on mass support, grassroots development, and funding - and it is this trifecta India needs to work on, systematically, asserts Prem Panicker.
Chronicles Of A Disaster Foretold
Rediff.com2 Aug 2024'The larger story of systematic destruction, which can and has been quantified, goes mysteriously missing from any political and/or public discourse about the ongoing devastation in the Ghats,' notes Prem Panicker.
India Won't See A Changed Modi!
Rediff.com23 Jul 2024For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
How Modi Lost While Winning
Rediff.com6 Jun 2024For the first time in his political career, he failed to carry his party to even a working majority -- and again, for the first time in his career, he finds himself in a situation where he cannot rule by dictatorial fiat, points out Prem Panicker.
Will UP Startle Modi?
Rediff.com31 May 2024The best-case scenario is that the BJP will top out at around 50 seats in UP -- a drop of 12 from the 62 it had won in 2019. Taken in tandem with Maharashtra and Karnataka, this is what is likely to put paid to the BJP's ambitions of a third term for Modi, argues Prem Panicker.
Will Phase 6 Stun BJP?
Rediff.com28 May 2024In Phase 6, indications are that the BJP, which is defending 40 seats, will lose in double digits and gain in single digits. Not good, if you are the ruling party scrambling to earn a working majority, with just one phase left to go, argues Prem Panicker.
A Rogue Wave Rising In The North
Rediff.com21 May 2024While people voted in a fifth round that will set the tone as this election rounds into the straight, and while Modi on the stump chews the cud of personal grievances and hackneyed promises that have long since passed their use-by date, there is a rogue wave rising -- what damage it will do, we will know 16 days from today, observes Prem Panicker.
Is There Really No Alternative To Modi?
Rediff.com14 May 2024'Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person -- other than Modi -- in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?' asks Prem Panicker.
Can Modi Win A Simple Majority?
Rediff.com9 May 20242019 was the Bharatiya Janata Party's breakout year, when it stretched the boundaries of what was thought possible and ended up with 303 seats on its own steam. Now it is forced to play defence, on a pitch queered by too many variables, asserts Prem Panicker.
Has BJP Fallen In Congress Trap?
Rediff.com6 May 2024On balance, RG contesting from Raebareli instead of Amethi isn't the masterstroke the party's adherents are touting it to be, but neither is it the blunder the BJP and its tame media is framing it as, points out Prem Panicker.
Modi Is Being Outnumbered And Out-Rallied
Rediff.com30 Apr 2024This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
Modi's Edifice Complex
Rediff.com18 Apr 2024To understand Modi, listen to what he does not say -- vide NRC, suggests Prem Panicker.
'Tied Test changed Australian cricket'
Rediff.com26 Sep 2020'As a player, the biggest question you ask yourself is whether you are good enough to be on the same ground as Gavaskar, Dev, Border and company.'
They sit there, stoic, implacable, defiant
Rediff.com2 Jan 2020It is a sight that both warms and breaks the heart. The women of Shaheen Bagh seem oblivious of the cold, these women and their children, the latter ranging in age from 19 days to early teens, who have been occupying the road for over two weeks now. Some of them have not gone home for days, but their faces are clear, unlined by fatigue, their eyes bright and fierce as those of the falcon, shaheen, the area is named for.
RIP Gauri. We will not let you down
Rediff.com7 Sep 2017'That is what Gauri was, in her essence -- the principle of free, open, forthright words, made flesh.' 'And that is what was gunned down -- her words, and with them our freedom to fashion our own opinions, to frame our own thoughts, to articulate them without fear of reprisal.'
The Muhammad Ali tribute you MUST read!
Rediff.com6 Jun 2016'Every Ali obituary I read made the point that he 'transcended his sport' -- a reference to the many battles he fought with America even as he fought in America.' 'What the obituaries leave out is that Ali equally transcended the boundaries of geography and of information -- as witness the Chennai teen who assimilated that most mobile of fighters through still images shorn of context.'
It's time to fix the IPL!
Rediff.com30 May 2016The IPL has produced more controversies in its short lifespan than any other sporting league in history.
Review: Azhar is a bland, badly-set souffl of Bollywood tropes without a soul
Rediff.com13 May 2016Who was Mohammad Azharuddin? More crucially, *what* was he? Those are precisely the questions that, as the end credits roll after 132 minutes of run-time, remain unanswered, feels Prem Panicker.
Why the hell was Harsha Bhogle axed?!
Rediff.com11 Apr 2016'The BCCI is -- and always has been, across successive dispensations -- allergic to criticism.' 'It has used the 'control' it enshrines in its name to destroy anyone who has dared to point fingers at its functioning,' says Prem Panicker, the distinguished cricket writer.