How can India improve her Happiness Quotient?
By M. Rajaque Rahman It does crush the pride of a nation to find itself ranked as low as 133rd in a global ranking of happiness. While it’s debatable whether something as subtle as happiness…
Commentary
Agrarian distress: India pays price of reforms by stealth
By Amit Kapoor The 180 km-long march of Maharashtra’s farmers from Nashik to Mumbai that swelled to about 40,000 in number by the time it reached the state capital is a potent reminder of the…
Do movies with roles needing big preparation turn into big flops?
By Subhash K. Jha Just reading and knowing about the preparation that Alicia Vikander undertook to play Lara Croft takes our breath away. But at the end of it all, what has she got to…
Hubris is letting down BJP
By Amulya Ganguli If one explanation has to be given for the BJP’s electoral ills in the Hindi heartland and nearby states, it is arrogance. Even more than the Narendra Modi government’s failures on the…
Why are India’s farmers committing suicide?
By Kota Neelima Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, fragmentation of land, unsuitability of seeds…
The Modi economy: Mostly sunny, with a few clouds
By Frank F. Islam On Sunday, January 7, the New York Times ran a front page story titled “Rising Anxiety in India is Piercing Modi’s Aura of Invincibility”. The article discussed the decline in GDP,…
Triumph of spirit over form: The extraordinary life and career of Stephen Hawking
By Vikas Datta Diagnosed with a debilitating condition when barely out of his teens, he was given just two years to live. But Stephen Hawking went to live on a further half-century. During those years,…
Airport infrastructure: Case for expediting growth
By Taponeel Mukherjee With its rapidly-growing economy, the fact that India needs significant investments in airport infrastructure cannot be overemphasised. While Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and privatisation of airports have been attempted to some extent, the…
Five years on, mandated philanthropy not delivering in India
By Amit Kapoor India is now into the fifth year of its unique experiment of legally binding companies to be socially responsible. This push by the government to solve the country’s most challenging social problems…
‘Mostly Harmless’: Douglas Adams’ comic universal ‘travelogue’ and its impact
By Vikas Datta No other book has gone so far. Last month, Canadian American entrepreneur Elon Musk sent a copy of this science fiction classic into deep space aboard his Roadster, with one of its…
Ban tobacco, promote sports
By Siddhartha Upadhyay Let me start by saying that I don’t want to sound a fanatic, for I don’t suggest anything that I can’t do myself. I quit smoking recently. And that’s no small feat….
Tripura ends CPI-M tedium by trading decency for false El Dorado
By Saeed Naqvi The extraordinary feat the BJP has pulled off leaves one breathless. Which other Chief Minister in the country will have a decorated Director General of Police, B.L. Vohra, write in his book,…
BJP’s politics of dualism could easily backfire
By Amulya Ganguli The Shakespearean phrase “fair is foul, foul is fair” can be one way of describing the contradictory nature of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) policies in different parts of the country. The…
Need to infuse new dynamism into stale India-France ties
By Ranvir Nayar Over the last seven decades, Indias relationship with France has been steady and stable, but perhaps a bit stale and out of energy — just like a long-married couple. The election of…
Blockchain can truly revolutionise our lives
By Amit Kapoor & Kashish Arora The use of the internet has undergone rapid evolution in a matter of a few decades. In the 1990s, the internet was described as “a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval…
How to eat something larger than yourself
By Nury Vittachi “An alligator can eat a quarter of its bodyweight in a single meal, equivalent to a human eating 89 bowls of rice,” a reader told me in an electronic conversation. I was…
Four hacks for women’s wellness
New Delhi, March 8 (IANS) Wellness takes a backseat for most women, what with a hectic schedule taking care of work, home, and all the people in their lives. This Women’s Day, encourage the women…
Modi-Macron moment: The real Belt and Road Initiative
By Rajendra Shende Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of the world’s fastest-growing economy, and Emmanuel Macron, President of the world’s most aggressive climate change saviour, have a rendezvous starting from March 9 in New Delhi. They…
Construction Bank: Way to bridge the infrastructure deficit
By Taponeel Mukherjee The State Bank of India’s (SBI) decision earlier this week to not fund interest payments during the infrastructure construction phase is not only a move to manage its exposure to infrastructure going…
Start-up finance: Six ways to win at fundraising as a woman founder
New Delhi, March 7 (IANS) Starting and scaling-up a business needs capital. Right capital, be it equity or debt or grant, can often be the critical difference between a successful business and the one that…