By Harihar Swarup Amitav Ghosh became the first writer in English to win Jnanpith IS A CRUSADER Award, one of India’s most prestigious literary prizes. It’s a sign of just how effectively he has decolonized the language. Borders mean little to the 67-year-old who was born in Calcutta...
By Dr.Gyan Pathak Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends 80 MPs in Lok Sabha, the largest number across the states, has lately been witnessing much increased political activities. Double anti-incumbency seems to be working against the double-engine government under PM Narendra Modi at the Centre and CM Yogi...
By Sushil Kutty Maharashtra politics is strange and is getting weirder by the day. Ask anybody in the streets of Mumbai. Pune or Nagpur. Opinion will not change even in Sambhaji Nagar. Ask political analysts and they’ll say Maharashtra’s politicians are to blame. Take, for instance, the powerful...
By Anjan Roy India is working out local currency trade deals with an increasingly larger group of countries, thereby avoiding invoicing in US dollars for every trade. This is a move towards internationalisation of the Indian currency when the country is opening up its external sector. India has agreed...
By K Raveendran ‘Pee-gate’, standing for the incident of a top executive of a multinational urinating on a co-passenger in an inumbrated state, was a new year sensation. The man, Shankar Mishra, was banned from flying for four months while Air India, the operator of the New York-Delhi...
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav A key feature of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent foreign trips was the vegetarian meals served in state banquets organized to mark his presence. On June 22, the White House organized a dinner that 400 guests attended. The three-course menu was simple and...
By James M Dorsey Increasingly, muzzling political freedoms beyond national borders is part of an autocrat’s toolkit. Men like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the presidents of Turkey and China, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Xi Jinping are no longer satisfied with silencing critical voices and controlling...
By Mark Gruenberg WASHINGTON: Trump and his inner circle are not at all shy about saying he will move to assume the role of a dictator should he be elected in 2024. Back in 1973, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., wrote The Imperial Presidency, a book focusing...
Finland’s new government had been in power for less than two weeks before entering into crisis. Vilhelm Junnila, the new minister of economic affairs, from the nationalist Finns Party, turned out to have had a history of far-right signaling, including jokes implying affinity toward Adolf Hitler. In a tight...
Former Kerala chief minister and Congress Working Committee member Oommen Chandy died in a hospital in Bengaluru on Tuesday morning. He was 79. Chandy was undergoing treatment in a Bengaluru hospital, where he died at around 4.30 am, his son Chandy Oommen announced through a Facebook post. The body...
By Nantoo Banerjee India has been put in a peculiar situation by Russian oil exporters as they prefer Yuan payment against the purchase of Russian crude by Indian importers. Of late, the latter are believed to be spending billions of dollars in buying Chinese Yuan to pay for Russian...
By Kalyani Shankar As we approach the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling NDA and the combined opposition prepare for the fierce battle ahead. The opposition is holding strategy meetings in Bengaluru its second, on July 18, while the NDA is meeting in Delhi on the same day to...
By Sushi Kutty Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be at the NDA meet on July 18. Modi wants to revive the comatose NDA as an alternative to the Opposition’s ‘Mahagathbandhan’, which is shaping up nice and friendly despite the blips and glitches. The BJP’s alliance partners in the NDA...
By Arun Srivastava The erratic actions of the BJP leadership, especially in three states, Maharashtra, Bihar and Bengal, makes it explicit that the threat of losing the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has turned it so desperate that would not mind going to any extent and abusing the state machinery...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Multiple crises and faster adoption of new technologies has sharply widened the skills and labour mismatch in the fast changing world of work globally. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) systems in many low and middle income countries, including India, are unprepared to meet...
By Raja Muzaffar Bhat August 5, 2019 started a dark chapter in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. The special status of the state guaranteed under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution was abrogated. The state was downgraded and bifurcated into two Union territories. Leaders from across the political...
By Mark Gruenberg LOS ANGELES: With the actors joining the strike by the Writers Guild and the technical people in Hollywood, the strike is now total against the owners of the movie companies and the big streaming channels. After more than four weeks of fruitless talks between SAG-AFTRA and...
By Girish Linganna Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s success in concluding high valued defence deals during his visit to France on July 13 and 14 has led to the escalation of fighting between the United States and France over the sale of high tech defence equipment to the burgeoning Indian...