Daily News & Analysis
  • Home
  • Mumbai
  • India
  • World
  • Money
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Opinion
  • Speak Up
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Sci/Tech
  • Academy
  • Gallery
  • Blogs
  • E-Paper
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Columns

Advanced Search

Venkatesan Vembu
Syndicate
this column

Venkatesan 'Venky' Vembu attained his first Fifteen Minutes of Fame in 1984, on the threshold of his career, when paparazzi pictures of him with Maneka Gandhi were splashed in the world media under the mischievous tag 'International Affairs'. But that's a story he's saving up for his memoirs...

Over 20-plus years, Venky worked in The Indian Express, Frontline newsmagazine, and Outlook Money, before joining DNA ahead of its launch. Additionally, he has been published, at various times, in, among other publications, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Outlook, and Outlook Traveller.

From his current station in Hong Kong, where he is frequently (and quite inexplicably) mistaken for the bumbling movie character Mr Bean, Venky endeavours to convey through his despatches the dramatic changes that are sweeping across the East Asian region and the glacial but steady Asia-ward shift in the geopolitical and economic centre of gravity.

When he is not scrambling to meet manic deadlines for his contributions across the different sections of DNA, Venky overdoses on Zhang Yimou movies - and struggles valiantly with the tonal complexities of the Chinese language.

more...
less...

Hong Kong, RIP

Will Hong Kong continue to enjoy its autonomy status?
September 11, 2009

There’s no such thing as a good drought

Consumers, whose already deficient attention spans have been abridged further by information overload, want only easily digestible, bite-sized bits of information.
September 1, 2009

Bye-bye, China!

Whenever overseas businessmen and bankers talk of India, their glowing references to the possibilities offered by the home-grown economic story are invariably tempered by unflattering allusions.
August 28, 2009

How Shah Rukh-itis is checkmating the US

US border protection officials at Newark who made bold to check the reigning Shah of Bollywood the other day have had extraordinarily to explain their actions.
August 18, 2009

When China rules the world…

On October 1, China will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding as a modern nation-state.
August 14, 2009

It’s getting dangerously bubbly in Asia

George Bernard Shaw once famously said that if all economists were laid end to end, they would never reach a conclusion.
August 4, 2009

The diva who Tweets

There’s more — much more — to Mallika than that; and as 10,000 or so of her fans who are following her on Twitter have discovered.
July 31, 2009

Panda hugging is risky business

In the world of geopolitics too, ‘panda-hugging’ — defined loosely as cosying up to China — is fraught with perils.
July 21, 2009

A jihad on China

China feels the heat of radical Islam.
July 17, 2009

Finance minister’s Micawberish budget

The budget that Pranab Mukherjee presented on Monday is Micawberish at many levels: it wallows in the optimism that “something will turn up” and restore the Indian economy.
July 7, 2009

Save Our Savita Bhabhi

In a recent episode from the enormously popular cartoon porn series, the services of the sexually ravenous protagonist are enlisted in an enterprise of great import to national security.
July 3, 2009

Why small-town India is checking out

That enterprise, of course, was rendered rather difficult by Australia’s peculiar identity as a colony of white settlers in a distinctly Asian part of the world.
June 23, 2009

Oz ‘racism’ knows a class divide

The chromatic caricature of Indians as a dark-skinned people occurs fairly commonly around the world, although it’s seldom explicitly mentioned in civil circles.
June 16, 2009
«
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
»


Interviews »
  • ‘India is not doing enough to protect China border’
  • Salaam Aleikum, China!
  • ‘Don’t make excuses for poor quality Made-in-China’
  • ‘China’s fears about India’s N-sub reveal small heart’
  • ‘China cannot really dump the dollar’
Analysis
  • ‘Disastrous failure of China’s policy in Tibet’
Reports
  • Dear PM, why is India so paranoid?
  • ‘India is misreading Sino-US ties’
  • Obama approval dips on job losses, ineffectual trip to Asia
  • The great Chinese car sales mystery
  • Did Obama stoop too low?

Our columnists
  • Anil Dharker
  • Antara Dev Sen
  • Arati R Jerath
  • Arati R. Jerath
  • Ayaz Memon
  • Cyrus Broacha
  • Dilip Vengsarkar
  • Gaurav Kapur
  • Javed Gaya
  • Madhu Jain
  • Magandeep Singh
  • Malavika Sangghvi
  • Mallika Sarabhai
  • Meghnad Desai
  • N Raghuraman
  • Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
  • R Jagannathan
  • Ranjona Banerji
  • Robin Sharma
  • Sandeep Shanbhag
  • Sathya Saran
  • Siddharth Bhatia
  • Sidharth Bhatia
  • Suresh Nair
  • Vinay Kamat
Contributors
  • Ankita Pandey
  • Arjun Parthasarathy
  • B Krishnakumar
  • Deblina Chakrabarty
  • Fahad K Samaar
  • Firoz Bakht Ahmed
  • Koel Purie
  • Manjula Pooja Shroff
  • MS Kamath
  • Mukul G Asher
  • Naini Setalvad
  • Pillman
  • Prof R Vaidyanathan
  • R N Bhaskar
  • Rakesh Bhatnagar
  • S Gangadharan
  • Shraddha Jahagirdar Saxena
  • Sumit Chakraberty
  • Vijay L Bhambwani
  • Vivek Kaul
  • Yatin Pandya
  • Zaheer Abbas
Popular Columns »
  • Suresh Nair : 2012: The end?
  • R Jagannathan: Fighting Hindi hegemony
  • Anil Dharker : For Muslims, the enemy lies within
  • Ayaz Memon: Twenty years is a couple of lifetimes in any sport
  • Mallika Sarabhai: Dubai: City of gold
  • Venkatesan Vembu: Before his Asia trip Obama should see 2012
  • Ranjona Banerji : Maharashtra’s issues come home to roost
  • Sandeep Shanbhag : Go for gold — the ETF way
  • R Jagannathan: Pink Panther strikes
  • Sidharth Bhatia : Laurel & Hardy are passé
About us | Contact us | Advertise with us | Subscription | Reprint rights
© 2005-2009 Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. All rights reserved.