Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s frisking at the Delhi international airport has sparked uproar in the Indian media.

Kalam is one of India’s most popular presidents, his tenure remembered both for his common touch and his earlier role in India’s rise as a nuclear power.

The government has filed a police report against Continental Airlines, whose staff frisked Kalam, violating a Bureau of Civil Aviation Security directive exempting specified VIPs and VVIPs from security checks.

Social networking sites were abuzz with angry Indians wondering how Americans would have reacted if, for example, former U.S. president Bill Clinton had been frisked.

For its part, the airline issued a statement saying both there were no exceptions to its security policy and it believed that Kalam had not been offended.

What do YOU think? Should Kalam have been frisked?

By C. Uday Bhaskar

(C. Uday Bhaskar is a New Delhi-based strategic analyst. The views expressed in the column are his own)

The joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the NAM Summit has generated considerable comment in both countries and is being interpreted across a wide bandwidth that ranges from outright condemnation to cautious cheer.

India and Pakistan are now back to formal engagement — albeit in a brittle manner with many caveats after the composite dialogue, that goes back to January 2004, had been put on freeze by India after the Mumbai terrorist attack of November 2008.

It is instructive that this modest breakthrough came on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit, which marks the first high-level political contact between the Obama administration and the UPA government after it was voted back to power.

The operative part of the statement is contained in a mere 18 words that read as: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.”

Critics in India have flayed Singh for his seeming ‘capitulation’ and invoked the criticism that he is ‘weak’ — a charge leveled against him during the early 2009 campaign phase.

In Pakistan, the joint statement is being perceived as a victory for Islamabad which had long sought this decoupling of action against terrorism (a euphemism for the investigation in the Mumbai attack) and the composite dialogue.

Some sections have compared PM Gilani’s performance to that of an astute captain who has won a crucial cricket match — allusion to Pakistan’s dramatic T20 victory at Lord’s in June.

A more objective assessment of the joint statement would suggest that yes, India was perhaps more conciliatory in what it conceded — but on balance this statement is a tightly drafted diplomatic win-win textual compromise for both leaders in a prickly domestic political environment.

India and Pakistan need to engage at the official level on many issues — none more urgent than terrorism — and the circle has been squared in a reasonably satisfactory manner.

Pakistan’s insistence that Mumbai is linked to the abiding and unresolved issue of Kashmir has been set aside (though India has accepted a neutral reference to Balochistan) and is now committed — once again — to deal effectively with the Mumbai investigations.

Singh made a detailed statement in parliament asserting that Islamabad is expected to deliver on Mumbai first — and that some progress has been made by way of a dossier having been received that admits to the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ‘mastermind’ Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

With this renewed commitment the Zardari-Gilani combine has infused some slender traction into the Mumbai investigations and justified Singh having gone the extra mile.

But will this be sustained? Past history and the unresolved politico-military contradictions within Pakistan do not augur very well. In 1972 when the Shimla pact was signed, PM Indira Gandhi was generous beyond compare with PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and in retrospect, India could be charged with having squandered an emphatic military victory by way of the politico-diplomatic gains that accrued to it.

To that extent PM Singh has also been more conciliatory and accommodating with PM Gilani than what his domestic critics would have grudgingly endorsed. Will the tangled and zero-sum history of Indo-Pak dialogues repeat itself — or will this prudent gamble-cum-investment by Singh pay off?

The answer to this conundrum lies to an extent in the visit of Hillary Clinton and the posture that the Obama administration proposes to adopt vis-à-vis terrorism and Pakistan.

In Delhi’s perception, the anti-India establishment in Pakistan has made a distinction between the good and bad terrorists. The latter include those who target the vital interest of Pakistan. But the former who target India are either tacitly encouraged or allowed to exploit the loopholes in Pakistani law and remain free.

The manner in which the Hafiz Saeed case is being prosecuted is illustrative. It is astonishing that Pakistani law ostensibly does not prohibit linkages with the al-Qaeda and yet the U.S. sees Pakistan as a principal ally in the war on terror.

Like the Pakistani policy, the U.S. is equally culpable of having followed an ambiguous approach towards terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Some transgressions get the Nelson’s eye – whether it is Hafiz Saeed or A.Q. Khan — or the ‘truth’ as revealed by President Zardari about the Pakistan establishment having supported and nurtured terrorism and religious radicalism.

It is time to ‘reset’ many South Asian policy buttons and the Clinton visit is an opportunity to clear the clutter. Distorted narratives about state support to terrorism, religious radicalism and nuclear proliferation must be jettisoned and the moderate civilian constituency in Pakistan enabled.

The Indo-Pak joint statement in Egypt has laid the foundation in a tentative manner and this must be strengthened in the Clinton visit.

The Indian Space Research Organisation has said that Chandrayaan-1, the country’s first unmanned moon probe, has malfunctioned and its two-year mission may need to be curtailed.

The Chandrayaan-1, which cost $79 million, was launched in 2008 to map the moon’s surface and look for precious metals.

The moon probe’s successful launch in October enthused the media and distracted India from an economic slowdown, collapsing stock prices and outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence.

In a recent interview, Delhi Metro chief Elattuvalapil Sreedharan told Reuters that the government should concentrate more on building basic infrastructure.

“The pressure should be more on that rather than going to the moon,” Sreedharan said.

Do you think the moon probe project was a mistake in a country where millions still survive on less than $2 a day?

The chief of Delhi’s metro rail system Elattuvalapil Sreedharan resigned on Sunday after a section of an overhead bridge under construction gave way and crushed five workers to death.

This is the second such accident involving the mass transit system in less than 12 months. Last October, a section of an under-construction flyover in the capital’s Lakshminagar area collapsed and fell on a bus, killing at least two persons.

The Metro project, led by the 77-year-old Sreedharan, came under rare media criticism following the deaths.

Sreedharan has enjoyed strong government support so far and is not shackled by the delays, cost-overruns and red tape that have plagued big projects in India for decades.

His reputation , access to officials including the prime minister, and a mandate to jump obstacles himself rather than wait for civic authorities, have enabled him to get results.

The widely acclaimed chief’s resignation could also come as a serious blow to Delhi Metro projects scheduled to be completed before the Commonwealth Games.

Sreedharan’s resignation comes at a time when Nandan Nilekani, another engineer-entrepreneur and co-founder of Infosys Technologies, quit his job to head a government agency.

Do you feel the Delhi metro chief took the right decision and will his resignation be accepted?

The music world, the Jackson family and thousands of fans bade farewell to Michael Jackson at a public memorial on Tuesday.

“The more I think about Michael, and talk about Michael, the more I think that ‘King of Pop’ is not good enough,” said Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, who signed The Jackson 5 in 1968.

“I think he is simply the greatest entertainer that ever lived.”

Here’s your chance to pay your final tributes to Michael Jackson.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee may have disappointed the markets with a higher spending plan, but the salaried class is definitely walking away a little cheerful.

Mukherjee’s budget announcements include provisions that will see an increase in the take-home component of an individual’s salary.

Income tax exemption has been hiked by 15,000 rupees for senior citizens and 10,000 rupees for the other categories.

Some of the other proposals include elimination of 10 percent surcharge on IT and scrapping of fringe benefits tax (FBT).

Has the budget met your expectations?

Mamata Banerjee’s railway budget for 2009-10 appeals to the common man. She has introduced cheaper tickets for the poor and kept passenger and freight tariffs unchanged, bringing cheer to the millions who use the world’s largest rail network daily.

Banerjee, who took over as the new railway minister, underscores the Congress party-led government’s focus on “inclusive growth” after it was re-elected in May.

In her budget speech on Friday, she said there were plans to introduce 57 new and 12 non-stop trains, upgrade 50 stations to international standards, have air-conditioned double-decker trains, build a 1,000 mw power plant to power electric locomotives, and resume issuance of tax-free IRFC bonds.

The country’s rail network carries more than 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tonnes of freight every day on a backbone of outdated technology. Do you think the railways can execute this daunting task and make train travel in India more comfortable?

The Delhi High Court’s ruling that homosexual sex among consenting adults is not a crime is expected to boost an increasingly vocal pro-gay lobby in India that says a British-era law banning gay sex is a violation of human rights.

The current law bans “sex against the order of nature”, and is widely interpreted to mean homosexual sex in India.

The High Court ruling applies to all of India, but can be appealed at the Supreme Court.

In a country where gay sex has been a taboo, will the court ruling have any bearing on how conservative Indians view homosexuality?

India’s Silicon Valley is saying goodbye to Nandan Nilekani, the engineer-entrepreneur who co-founded Infosys Technologies and helped put India on the global IT map.

A statement from the country’s No. 2 software exporter on Thursday said Nilekani has been invited by the prime minister to head the government agency Unique Identification Authority of India in the rank of a cabinet minister.

Nilekani’s exit throws up several questions — what prompted this co-chairman with a spotless past to take up a government responsibility? In a nation of billion-plus people where corruption is seen putting the brakes on most government initiatives, can Nilekani replay a corporate story of success? Can he bring the same professionalism in the corridors of power at Raisina Hill?

Holding posts of CEO and later MD, he helped propel Infosys, which he co-founded with mentor Narayana Murthy, from scratch to a world-class company “despite the system”.

Reports say the UPA government is keen on using Nilekani’s professionalism to get its Unique Identity Card project off the ground.

Infosys and its employees may have delivered on many large-scale projects for Fortune 500 companies, but can the success be replicated in a purely government initiative? And does Nilekani’s move augur well for Infosys and the government?

If Pakistan’s battle against the Taliban seems difficult, a much tougher challenge lies ahead: deciding what to do about the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it once nurtured to fight India in Kashmir.

For security analysts, the two questions are whether the army and ISI can close down the LeT, and if they want to do so — the assumption being that this would have to be done by the country’s powerful military rather than the civilian government.

Analysts say the army may be rethinking its attitude to militants after it lost control of the Pakistani Taliban, which overran the Swat valley and began encroaching on Punjab.

But giving up the LeT, seen as a “force multiplier” in the event of an invasion by India — rather like citizens trained in civil defence — would be another step altogether.

Would Pakistan army turn against the LeT?