'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.

On all key issues, Congress is MIA, sighs Shekhar Gupta.

India must break out of this strategic triangulation between China and Pakistan. We need to settle our issues with one of the two, notes Shekhar Gupta.

Not all change is good, but this one is, applauds Shekhar Gupta.

The Modi government is notoriously honest about one fact: It does not listen to economists, observes Shekhar Gupta.

This crisis requires political sophistication and governance skills. This BJP has neither, observes Shekhar Gupta.

There is a vocal constituency of educated, well-to-do, articulate Indian elites who would rather go with the idea that too much democracy is a liability. That India needs a spell of benevolent dictatorship. Of course, they have never lived under one, points out Shekhar Gupta.

In politics, if your objective is only winning elections, just Chanakya neeti might do. For governance you need both, Chanakya neeti and Ram Rajya. You can neither beat up the farmers into submission, nor dismiss them as 'Khalistanis', asserts Shekhar Gupta.

Pranabda hasn't given us any indication of the tough period when he realised Sonia Gandhi had decided to give the presidency not to him, but to then vice-president Hamid Ansari. He wrested the presidency from her, and handed her the biggest defeat of her UPA years, observes Shekhar Gupta.

At some stage this fall in the quality of life will begin to hurt anybody's popularity, observes Shekhar Gupta.

The Sikhs love a good fight, and that's what the Modi government has given them.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi is now gone. But the mass appeal of fundamentalism among Pakistan's burgeoning, young, illiterate, unemployed and angry population isn't, observes Shekhar Gupta.

Prime Minister Modi made a strategic blunder of Nehruvian proportions -- presuming no war can happen now, and the Chinese won't be a military threat and risk their economic interests, observes Shekhar Gupta.

China is now the most significant strategic concern in Washington, as in most of the world's capitals, especially the democracies. Today, strategic autonomy has acquired a sharper definition: To ward off the Chinese challenge to India's territorial integrity, sovereignty and regional stature, observes Shekhar Gupta.

In its sway over national politics now, the Modi-Shah BJP is what the Congress was under Indira Gandhi. Why would they indulge coalition partners, their greed and egos now, asks Shekhar Gupta.

'The more the news media weakens, especially at this juncture of economic ruin with lay-offs and wage cuts, the more the owners and journalists weigh their value in terms who they are close to, the more they depend on the State to bail them out of trouble, slow-fry their rival, the faster it pushes us towards institutional destruction,' warns Shekhar Gupta.

If Modi's truly a reformer and a believer in minimum government, he would bury the Vodafone ghosts now. He would also then go to Bihar, campaigning on his politically controversial reforms. Both will need him to dip deep into his accumulated political capital and risk it, suggests Shekhar Gupta.

'Suspect all, fix all.' 'It is this mindset that begins at the very top of an establishment and then trickles down and across,' notes Shekhar Gupta.

In a time of crisis like this, a government needs its people and politics united. A nation of India's size and diversity can't fight a stronger rival with fraying social cohesion, observes Shekhar Gupta.

'In India, a really popular and well-entrenched leader is not defeated by a rival.' 'Such a leader has to defeat himself,' observes Shekhar Gupta.