By Sushil Kutty It’s confirmed. Elections, combined with the politics swirling around them, brings the worst out of politicians, and political parties. Witness what has been happening in Gujarat, and in Delhi with the MCD elections, which has a 15 year anti-incumbency pulling back on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s...
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav The right to privacy in the time of the internet boom is difficult to enforce. But governments around the world are working to reverse this and restore control in the hands of users. Between tech companies and governments, there is a rush to take...
By Arun Srivastava Spectre of the BJP losing power in Gujarat has made Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the strongman of Indian politics uneasy. Little doubt this baffling transformation was conjured by the success of Bharat Jodo Yatra. Only a couple of days back he was looking at Rahul’s Yatra...
By Claudia Horn As world leaders gathered for this year’s COP27 climate summit in Egypt, the sister of jailed British-Egyptian activist AlaaAbd el-Fattah addressed the following words to the international media: At this conference, the most vulnerable are supposed to negotiate with the most powerful. I want to say...
By Nantoo Banerjee The government may disagree, India’s economic performance in the last eight years has proved to be rather lacklustre. It has been facing a real challenge from the ever expanding black economy, substantially eating up the revenue income of both the national and state governments. Unaccounted money...
By Nitya Chakraborty Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee has done it again. His third book’ The Song of the Cell’ published this year has once again mesmerized the doctors, scientists and the common readers much more than the impact he had with his first two books ‘The Emperors of all Maladies’...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak Outcome of CoP27 makes a history in agreeing on setting up a loss and damage fund to help the developing countries, but failed to agree on greater actions to successfully deal with the rising temperature of the Earth, that the Paris Agreement of 2015 has...
By Arun Srivastava Like other incongruities, the Narendra Modi government once again has resorted to the same tactics and made Reserve Bank of India answerable for implementing the Prime Minister’s personal decision to demonetise the currency. Only three days back Modi government virtually in an act of renunciation of...
By N. Kavitha Rameshwar The judgment of the Madras High Court on November 14 in the case of Sunitha versus Additional Chief Secretary to Government & Ors. is of increased significance for two reasons. Firstly, it acknowledges the transformation of the welfare State into a police State that has...
By Sushil Kutty Former US Vice President Mike Pence is back, armed with a memoir with which he wills to conquer the future—Pence wants to be the spotlight in 2024 even as Donald Trump announced he’s gonna give himself another chance in the glare of the White House. Asked...
By Tirthankar Mitra Time was when politics in West Bengal was studded by luminaries Kiran Shankar Roy and Hiren Mukherjee known for their erudition and courtesy towards their political opponents who were never considered to be enemies. The tradition eroded over the years as politeness took a back seat...
By K Raveendran Some 70-odd crore-strong Indian male population will be called upon to come out of their obsession with masculinity as the draft Digital Data Protection Bill, 2022, unveiled by Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for public debate the other day, only identifies them in the feminine gender. Under...
By Dr. Gyan Pathak The National Investigating Agency (NIA) under Union Home Minister Amit Shah as Union Minister of Home Affairs has now gained enough notoriety in the public as violators of rule of law and even the order of the courts of justice. NIA’s attitude towards the human...
By Harihar Swarup Maharaja Harijai Singh of Jammu & Kashmir signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947. He was in a tough spot. The subcontinent has been divided on the basis of faith and his mind was not only the 80% Muslims in the state, but also...
By Arun Srivastava Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray refutation to Rahul Gandhi’s remark on Savarkar might have been driven by political compulsions, but it has provided with the much awaited opportunity to BJP to humiliate and slander him as the true inheritor of the legacy of Balasaheb Thackeray. Vitriolic...
By Dr Arun Mitra Perplexed with the report that India has further fallen in the Hunger Index to 107th position out of 121 countries, the government of India, instead of debating corrective measures is out to criticise the agencies Welthungerhilfe (WHH) or Concern Worldwide, who calculate this index every...
By Sushil Kutty The main protagonist in the open and shut ‘Fridge Murder’ case, a la the ‘tandoor murder’ saga, Aftab Poonawala, is in safe hands. This, after a Delhi court warned the Delhi Police from using the third degree on Poonawala in their zeal to nail the self-confessed...
By Ashis Biswas Thanks to improved regional connectivity and growing bilateral interest, the volume of trade between India’s Northeastern states and Bangladesh has gone up significantly in recent years. Present trends are positive enough to generate optimism among analysts about medium term prospects of North East India-Bangladesh bilateral trade:...