Ashwin Mahesh is an atmospheric scientist and astronomer by training, and makes a parallel career in writing and journalism. He is a co-founder and editor of the public-interest information initiative, India Together. The India Central column, which has appeared on Rediff since April 1997, examines public interest positions on the significant issues of the day.

•Dirty secrets in the national interest  - September 20, 2002
'The shallow reasoning behind official secrecy in especially inexcusable in a country where hundreds of millions of the rural poor live subsistence lives.'

• Ticketless travel, destination Parliament   - September 6, 2002
'We rarely pause to consider a startling fact -- very few candidates are nominated by ordinary citizens within their own constituency. Instead, your average contestant at the polls has reached the ballot by securing a "ticket." '

• The real public servants   - August 24, 2002
'Often at the mercy of vindictive bureaucrats and criminal politicians, they risk their very lives pursuing an idea of India that speaks to justice, integrity and above all, simple human decency.'

• The office and its holder   - August 8, 2002
'By his occupation of high office, President Kalam must bring to the political process some of the character it clearly needs. To do so, however, he must participate more deeply in the affairs of state, and not remain a mere figurehead as some would prefer.'

• The beginnings of informed citizenship   - July 19, 2002
'Education and elections -- the primary political beasts of this year so far -- may yet find routine suffocation by the political class, but the developments that have begun to place them before us are not easily defeated.'

• The people vs the government   - June 19, 2002
'The quest for electoral and democratic reform is an inextricable part of improving our nation. The process isn't easy, or even immediately rewarding to those who dedicate their lives seeking such positive change. Nonetheless, it is necessary.'

• Justice without justiciability?   - May 20, 2002
'The Directive Principles proudly claim to be fundamental to the nature of the Constitution, and yet a commission to review the Constitution has passed them by with only the smallest consideration.'

• The laws, in hindsight   - May 6, 2002
'The challenge before our leaders is to muster the courage to act upon each of the recommendations of the Constitution Review Commission, regardless of whether it is ultimately accepted or rejected.'

• An irrelevant fury   - March 28, 2002
'One day these riots will stop. Not just these ones in Gujarat, but most riots -- everywhere in the country. There will come a time when the the hoodlums will be culled from the devotees and hauled off to their proper homes in prisons.'

• Dear Prime Minister   - February 15, 2002
'Your fortunes have plunged because the party promised much and delivered little. Your political party has been unable to rise above the appearance of similarity to its predecessors in government.'

• Your news, my way   - January 31, 2002
'Once regarded as inalienable to ensuring the public good, media today increasingly serves a private purpose above all. The core reason one is troubled by the possibility of orchestrated media is that if real, it would appear to shape our very lives.'

•Left, or left out?   - December 6, 2001
'The Left, moribund from its own cancerous failings, must be retrieved from the abyss in which it has sunk. Absent as a political platform, the stewardship of this responsibility has fallen upon the shoulders of the little people -- as witnessed by repeated street-level opposition to nearly every government initiative.'

•A special responsibility   - November 6, 2001
'We must embrace the view that the idea of India belongs to those who seek it, even if the state itself is ours alone, and is not denied to those who are persecuted for their cultural or social connections to India or to values we profess.'

•War, for no particular reason   - October 18, 2001
'The very battles we now wage in the name of freedom, and in protest against oppression, will bring forth other catastrophes and take other innocent lives.'

•Representation, not reservation   - August 17, 2001
'The obviously divisive nature of reservations speaks against policies that promote set-asides for select groups. The challenge before us, then, is to square thwarting the notion of reservation even while encouraging appropriate representation.'

•Mutually Advantageous Detente   - July 13, 2001
'The real opportunity for Pakistanis and Indians alike lies in understanding that our continuing conflict is an irritant that undermines the larger opportunity -- to mount the stage of the entire world together.'

•Foul weather over Kyoto   - June 15, 2001
'Defeating Kyoto is ultimately a political objective, and the American president may well achieve that. Nature is not as easily bested. Statesmanship is the ability and willingness to recognize the difference.'

•A marketable nation   - May 25, 2001
'A party that draws inspiration from history -- even its own version of it -- finds itself shackled by the times. Rather than wield the weapons of democratic opinion-building to advantage, the BJP has remained awkward and limited in packaging its messages.'

•Amar Chitra Tehelkatha   - May 4, 2001
'It behooves the informed, you and I, to protest how easily our nation's dispossessed are belittled by the laws, by the appearance of concern, and by the mere suggestion of a state that acts in their interest. This isn't democracy; it isn't even government.'

•Neighborhood Nationalism   - April 20, 2001
'Mumbai for the Marathis, Meghalaya for the Khasis, Bangalore for the Kannadigas, Guwahati for the Assamese. The myopia of neighborhood nationalism is incredible, but dangerously real as well.'

•Cropped at the knees   - April 6, 2001
'Do the negotiated procedures of the WTO reflect a fair understanding of what is good for India, and for the majority of her people?'

•The emperor's new guns   - March 27, 2001
'The public has a right to know how the government functions, but additionally, it is an integral part of governing to inform the people. Armed with that knowledge, we can buy all the weapons in the world from the finest manufacturers at the most appropriate prices.

•The Warmth of a Vanishing Piety   - March 9, 2001
'There is an honest purposefulness to a person who would abandon the normal passage of his/her life, and travel a thousand miles and more bringing succour to the devastated. That a materially deprived people can still muster the conviction to strive beyond this calamity, is heartening. In an age of diminishing personal integrity, we find ourselves stirred by the sight of compassionate strangers reaching across substantial barriers. The charity of their hearts is inspiring, even if also a compelling reminder of the total absence of such sentiment in everyday life.'

•The Beavis Society   - February 19, 2001
'As voters, we must demand greater scholarship from our leaders. Even the most vitriolic disagreements over national policies should be acceptable, so long as they advance the process of culling from among the exchanges a well-founded mechanism to serve a widely-accepted purpose.'

•The common-sense fix   - January 26, 2001
'Let the Directive Principles of State Policy be more than a set of ideals to which we profess homage. Instead, let them have the force of law, and be enforceable in the courts.'

•A personal weakness   - January 22, 2001
'Bush's challenge lies in convincing the American people and the world that his choices reflect strong opinions, not merely the inability to argue their opposites. He deserves a fair opportunity to prove this, but the question is already at hand.'

•Ruin in the Commons   - January 12, 2001
'Our nation of a billion people, home to a fifth of humanity and counting among the ten largest economies in the world, is reduced to spectatorship in the process of deciding the very fate of the planet. Yes, this is the sort of irrelevance in which we routinely find ourselves.'

•Nothing like us   - December 15, 2000
'What might we discern of those who find parity with a prosperous and calm society only in its time of distress? Is the best of Indian public life to be equated only with the very worst in America?'

•How can I help you?   - December 1, 2000
'Life isn't about understanding other people, I have decided, or having them understand me. One accepts things, not so much in fatalism as with awareness. And the only honest measure of how the encounters pass is the sincerity of intent, both in the things I observe and the lessons I take away from them.'

•The ordinary as icon   - October 6, 2000
'The more intriguing aspect of development, which is only faintly upon us, is the notion of an Indian uniformity clearly separated from the rest of the world. Once the material aspects of the oft-quoted 200 million consumers with buying power are dealt with, we will still have social and political scenarios of uniformity, and how deeply these become entrenched will determine the evolution of India in the next 50 years.'

•Doing right, on our own   - August 26, 2000
'Is there a measure of decency that we would ourselves profess to uphold, without the need for outside scrutiny? When a fair measure of counter-accusations have passed under the bridge, we must pause to examine if the river is indeed polluted.'

•The Tamil Twist   - August 8, 2000
'We certainly don't need champions for non-issues. Tamils in Karnataka are doing just fine, thank you, and the sooner politicians leave well enough alone, the better we can get on with the economic goals we're all pursuing.'

•Rites of Passage   - July 21, 2000
'I am getting older. It is getting to be about that time of life when I have to stand up and be counted among the men of this world bearing a responsible share of duty. But the truth is also this -- that more often than not I stop to remember a different time, when I was content to roll in sandpits and accumulate the world's dirt instead of its learning.'

•The call to egalitarianism   - May 12, 2000
'It is not merely communist tripe repackaged as liberal concern. Instead in a nation as large and as poorly policed as ours, it is a reasonable counterweight to the threat of violent protest and is an acknowledgement that the rising tide must guarantee everyone access to a minimum prosperity even if not the achievement of it.'

•Choice is the real public interest   - April 26, 2000
'Contrary to the view from citadels of economic theory, people often know how best to help themselves. All the learning in the world cannot displace the native wisdom of those whose lives we strive to empower through development programmes.'

•The spectre of imagined suffering   - April 10, 2000
'Any honest assessment of the Indian immigrant experience, especially in the 1990s, must conclude that the spectre of suffering that we are asked to be beware of is mostly imaginary. Nobody is out to get us, even if there were an us in the first place.'

•Water's Edge   - March 24, 2000
'Rational opinion and sound policy must replace the irrelevant posturing on the parts of all those who are involved with the Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada river.'