Blogs

By Darshnik Vyas The role of a newspaper, it is believed, is to inform. But that is only a part of what a modern newspaper is supposed to do. A greater part of its mandate…

At a book launch a couple of months ago, it was remarked that the tale of Akbar’s mentor Bairam Khan and his poet-general son Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khanan was so interesting because its “teller” was not…

India’s drive to encourage the use of efficient LED light bulbs has till now been restricted, for the most part, to households. The government leveraged its buying power to make LEDs available at discounted prices….

By Boria Majumdar Some had called it yet another mismatch. Others had gone a step further and said it is one more practise game for India. More, some had said that India, after posting 321,…

The Centre is reportedly planning a major policy initiative to rev up usage of electric vehicles. The game plan is to sell automobiles without batteries. This would slash costs by as much as 70 per…

By Richard Heald With the announcement of the Strategic Partnership policy, the Indian ministry of defence (MoD) has rolled out a significant initiative aimed at revitalising the ‘Defence Industrial Ecosystem’. This announcement could be ground-breaking….

By Samir Saran & Arun Sukumar External engagement is a factor of internal priorities. This has been an abiding tenet of India’s foreign policy. Which is why it’s puzzling that New Delhi’s policy towards China’s…

By A Srinivas  Who is a good human being? Charles Dickens said people were good and bad. But he couldn’t figure out what made them that way. Unfortunately, Dickens missed — by about 50 years…

It’s heartening that three Indian universities feature among the top 200 in the latest QS world ranking of universities. QS rankings have a weightage of 50 per cent for reputation among the academics and employers…

Finance minister Arun Jaitley did the right thing by making it clear that the government respects the RBI’s decision on policy rates, something that is within its remit to set, through the new mechanism of…

There’s always been a lot of discussion on whether men and women can ever be close friends without sexual attraction coming in the way. From my personal experience, I say yes. I have so many…

My father died a deeply disappointed man. His one dream for his four children remained unfulfilled — we didn’t appear for the UPSC exam. My siblings did brilliantly in their chosen fields. But it wasn’t…

The United States’ bizarre withdrawal from the Paris treaty has given Narendra Modi the very rare opportunity for global leadership. The treaty is a voluntary agreement in which nations commit to cutting their emissions of…

The most effective way to deal with unpleasant facts is to render them as exaggerations. You hear shouting next door followed by the sound of someone sobbing every night, and you come to the conclusion:…

China is not only constructing China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on land passing through the India’s J&K which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan but is also constructing a secret underwater observation system in the disputed East…

“NBE should rise up to engage and mature with the medical community which continues to re-discover itself through the extra-ordinary school of experience, learning daily from the corridors of a medical ward, interacting with communities…

“Bless me, O Lord! Forgive me for what I am going to do. May the one who dies at my hands find peace….” These were the words of Nata Mullick, as he waited to hang…

As a boy she always wanted to be a girl. Tripthy has since then lived many lives, as a boy and a girl, man and woman, transgender and transsexual. She has worked as babysitter, caterer,…

A little past midnight in a house in Alappuzha, young Suhail Siddhik’s bedroom has an eerie glow – emitted by his computer monitor. The young man is completely disconnected from his surroundings, visually and aurally,…

Congress is at it again. Back to its old game of fishing in troubled waters and adding fuel to fire. As is its wont, Congress is trying to make political capital out of the unfortunate…

Sarkar is generally as short of a sense of humour as water flowing on Mars but foreign minister Sushma Swaraj is a first-class exception. So when some desi wag told her on Twitter that he…

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to call for snap elections in the UK has blown up in her face. May had hoped that the polls would give her an enhanced mandate and strengthen her…

Washington: Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights, sang the late Jamaican reggae master Bob Marley. Would he sing with the same verve if he were around today? He probably would since he’d…

The British general election has sensationally delivered a hung parliament. It is an outcome that few had anticipated. British PM Theresa May had called a snap poll to obtain a decisive mandate for the Brexit…

Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry was greeted with laughter when he told his audience at a US think tank that there were no terror havens in Pakistan. Former US ambassador to Afghanistan,…

What is it about the Indian elite, which makes them salivate at the thought of global leadership? Barely had President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris accord, that we were exulting at the…

Many problems are easy to spot and fix. But a few are tough to locate, harder to repair. What exactly went wrong with Team India against Sri Lanka belongs to the second category. Few, and…

‘You are too sensitive’….this tagline has been tagged along awkwardly right from earliest days of my childhood when I was unable to decipher the meaning of the word ‘sensitive’…My first brush with this word dates…

A former member of Centre’s high-level panel on long-term food security, Dr Madhura Swaminathan, also the chairperson of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) has been selected by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)…

Unless you are one of those keen followers of Tamil Nadu politics, it is unlikely that you knew the name Edappadi K Palaniswami before February. The 63-year-old was swept to the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s…