“Anything free this election?” a fictitious friend asks me, leaning forward with the eagerness of a man about to win a lucky draw. “Quite a bit,” I tell him. “In fact, so much that you may soon wonder why anyone ever thought of working.” He nods thoughtfully. Because that is…


Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.