<b>Shekhar Gupta:</b> Indira Gandhi at 100: Why she still rules India

She believed in statist, povertarian economics and crush-the-opposition-to-dust 'Total Politics'. If both ideas thrive under Mr Modi now, she still rules our minds

One reason I so love my job as a journalist is that I also love to tell stories. It’s a regret, therefore, that I do not have many stories for this National Interest on Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary.

I was 27 when she died. Yet, given how limited VVIP security used to be, I found myself close to her on two occasions. She was out of power in the summer of 1979, and going to Srinagar on what used to be the only flight to the city, an Indian Airlines HS-748 Avro (IC-421), which did the daily Delhi-Chandigarh-Jammu-Srinagar hop. It