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Sushil Kutty Pastoral brings to mind rolling hills, green meadows, scattered farms, standing crops, farms, sheep, fowl, horses, cow, smoke rising lazily from chimneys… and in the distance, the spires of a church. Peaceful. Idyllic. Pastoral. Then comes a series of letters, and pastoral turns political. First,...
By Morning Star Reporting Team Hundreds of thousands of people are “trapped” in debt and facing legal trouble because they cannot afford to pay for social care, research by the GMB union has found. The report, which is based on freedom of information requests submitted to local authorities...
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is no mistaking the signs: Kerala’s political landscape is all set to acquire a deeper shade of red in the wake of the Chengannur assembly by-election result. CPI(M) candidate Saji Cherian retained the seat by trouncing Congress candidate D Vijaya Kumar by...
By Aditya Aamir Jocko Street cut short the overseas call. “Shashi Tharoor is in trouble, what will I tell my friends in Thiruvananthapuram? Their hearts will be broken, especially the women.” Alec Smart stabbed a finger in the air: “What happened to Tharoor? Last I heard the man...
By Nilanjan Banik For India, the case of rising income inequalities deserves special attention. New World Wealth, a Johannesburg-based company, published a report where it claimed that India is the second-most unequal country in the world, with millionaires controlling 54 percent of the wealth. In Japan, the most...
By W T Whitney Jr. On May 25, 2018, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos made an announcement that Colombia has joined North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). He mentioned too that Colombia was joining the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, an international club of creditors of deeply indebted...
By Nitya Chakraborty The national executive of the Communist Party of India which met at New Delhi on June 3 and 4, 2018, in party’s central headquarters Ajoy Bhavan expressed serious concern at the deteriorating economic and political situation, unbridled hikes in the prices of all petroleum products...
By Dr Bhalchandra Kango AURANGABAD: Shiv Sena had called for a Hindu ‘Shakti March’ in Aurangabad on May 19 against the city police and the home department which failed to take action against those responsible for recent mob violence here. The three wards of old city in...
By Sushil Kutty Mark Zuckerberg must not like the New York Times anymore. The clean-cut CEO of Facebook, social media where friends serenade friends and get high on ‘likes’, was just getting over the profligacy of Cambridge Analytica when the NYT comes out with this report that Facebook...
Sushil Kutty Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on June 6, 2018, for the ninth time, clarified that there’s no “scam in Rafale”. She also reiterated that those shouting “ammunition shortage” should be asking themselves, “Who left the shortage? There was shortage before 2014.” The Raksha Mantri, in her forgotten...
Aditya Aamir A Kaala war is on in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Karnataka, two states with links to Kaala superstar Rajinikanth, a man whose name recognition in distant shores – Japan to Singapore to sister-city Dubai – is like ‘Hail the Queen’ in the United Kingdom, where films walk through cinema halls...
By Amulya Ganguli As in London last April, Narendra Modi participated in a choreographed question-and-answer session in Singapore recently, where one of his responses was apparently to a pre-set query. The difference between the two events was that the BJP aficionado and censor board chief, Prasoon Joshi, managed...
Sushil Kutty ‘Gossip dies when it hits a wise person’s ears’, the Buddhist told the journalist who slapped a sneer and shot back, “What about rumour?” The Buddhist shifted to a different asana: “That, my friend, I’m afraid, will move on unless the wise one opens his mouth...
By Nitya Chakraborty At long last, the Congress President Rahul Gandhi has been acting as the unifier of the anti-BJP forces giving up the arrogance associated with the grand old party that it is the natural party of governance. Karnataka assembly elections results set the process and frankly...
G.Srinivasan For the Modi Government, the celebration of the four years of corruption-free governance with the receipt of the mixed message of the latest batch of by-polls to Lok Sabha and State Assemblies across the nation behind, the crucial final year of its first term is replete with...
By Arun Srivastava Like his illustrious leader, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh is also a brainy politician and can dare to come out with any statement. Taking a leaf out of his past experience, he described the two-day-old farmer agitation a publicity stunt. According to him, the...
By Nantoo Banerjee India’s business houses and entrepreneurs are going all out to acquire companies across the world, thanks to the support from the government, RBI and banks. The global deal-street now seriously takes note of Indian bids and transactions. India’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in...
Aditya Aamir In Nipah-spooked Kozhikode and Malappuram districts of Kerala, the state has asked for desperate measures to handle an expected second wave of infections. Already 17 of the 20 ‘Nipah infected’, who were hospitalised, are dead. That is a kill-rate of over 89 percent, much more than...