Behind Pakistan's Defeat
A secret inquiry into Pakistan's debacle in the 1971 war held army atrocities, widespread corruption, cowardice and the moral laxity of its generals as prime reasons for the defeat in East Pakistan. The explosive Hamoodur report has never been disclosed-until now.

Peace Takes a Knock
The Hizb has resumed battle, the killings continue and the Hurriyat is in a quandary but the Government feels these are temporary roadblocks to peace.

AS Good As It Gets?
The economy has been chugging along well this year. Will it pick up speed or lose steam in the coming months? Right now there is more optimism than unease about the future.

Fifth Column
by Tavleen Singh
Pendulum Politics

Right Angle
by Swapan Dasgupta
Good Boys Don't Win

Flip side
by Dilip Bobb
Ransom Notes

On the Descendants
Former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao drove across to 10 Janpath to meet Sonia Gandhi...

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EDITORIAL

The Kandahar Legacy

Securing Rajkumar's liberty-and India's dignity

Anniversaries, resolutions and new beginnings are the hobby-horse of the unrepentant optimist. Evidently, India is made of sterner stuff. It began the year with the surrender at Kandahar, with the foreign minister personally delivering a bunch of terrorists to freedom in a silent admission of the sheer
impotence of the Indian state when faced with crazed hijackers. It now contemplates August 15 with a replay of Kandahar in miniature. A forest brigand holds a film star and two states to ransom, his open-ended charter of demands reading suspiciously like the manifesto of an imminent political career. From the infamous episode of Rubaiyya Sayeed in 1989 -- which many see as the psychological turning-point of the battle in the Kashmir Valley -- to Veerappan, India's image as a lily-livered society only too willing to be pushed around has not changed. What has happened though is that every VIP has acquired a price on his head. A Rajkumar's kidnapping can put Karnataka in a mess; a bigger icon's spiriting away could put the whole country out of gear.

Different countries have different approaches to hostage crises. There is the American approach of an inflexible "no surrender". The Israelis, among the world's toughest adversaries of terrorism, release prisoners if necessary -- but do their best to eliminate the criminals post-exchange. India takes the easiest option -- cringe and surrender. Each time this happens, the same excuses are touted -- "soft state", "a society unused to hard decisions". Yet enough is never enough; every capitulation inspires a fresh abduction, preferably one with a political gloss. The authority of the state is emasculated. Veerappan should be made a counter-offer: surrender and India will treat you with leniency, as it did dacoits such as Malkhan Singh and Phoolan Devi. Accord is welcome -- but it can never flow from the barrel of a gun.

Statement Singh Dhindsa

Translating amorphous views into focused action

If column inches of newspaper space and frequency of appearance on television bulletins be the criteria, Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, Union minister for sports and youth affairs, must be the runaway winner of cricket's fixing scandal. For the good part of four months Dhindsa -- otherwise a second-rung Akali politician and president of the Cycling Federation of India -- has enlightened the country with his views on Indian cricket, its morality, administration, playing schedules, everything. He has summoned players and officials, upbraided a senior politician for criticising the nature of the recent tax raids on cricketers and, only the other day, wondered at how India can play Pakistan in the light of the renewed killings in Jammu and Kashmir. If verbosity alone could bring about change Dhindsa wouldn't be a minister; he'd be a full-fledged revolutionary. Unfortunately India is not looking to Dhindsa for speculation; it is demanding decisions.

The vulnerabilities of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have never been a secret. That it is not exactly convinced of the virtues of long-term planning, nursing new talent, fostering domestic cricket and rational tour schedules is old hat. Yet when it produces a completely banal and lifeless "Vision Statement" the minister scarcely admonishes it. Nor does he spell out a more rigorous alternative. Dhindsa's supporters will point out the BCCI is an autonomous body. Other than the truly cretinous, nobody will argue that the government should take over the running of cricket and, in effect, nationalise the BCCI. Nevertheless there is much Dhindsa can do, especially given the BCCI officialdom's current hang-dog demeanour, to inject a dose of accountability into the cricket system. Is he up to it?

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Looking Glass
Delhi, Restaurant
Bangalore, Play

Don't ask for more funds, demand the right to collect, INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar writes to Chandrababu Naidu in Au ContrAiyar.

Read the transcript of
Wednesday's live chat with Vasudevan Bhaskaran, Chief Coach of Indian hockey.

The Mercenary Journalist
Pressures of meeting deadlines have always been nerve-wracking in Kashmir. But never before has there been such desperation to be the first to break news, writes India Today Special Correspondent Ramesh Vinayak who has covered militancy for over a decade.

"May be Veerappan should be given a chance to reform," Karnataka CM S.M. Krishna tells INDIA TODAY Principal Correspondent Stephen David as one of the options being considered to secure the release of superstar Rajkumar.

In the eerie world of superstition that still exists in Andhra Pradesh's Telengana region, four women and a man are brutally burned to death allegedly for practising black magic. INDIA TODAY Associate Editor Amarnath K. Menon says in Despatches