By Ramya Natarajan For the past several winters, Delhi has drawn global attention for its life-threatening smog levels. This is attributed, in part, to the open burning of biomass residues like paddy straw and stubble…
By Taponeel Mukherjee Higher oil prices, the consequent inflationary pressures and a weaker rupee have dominated recent news headlines. While short-term measures to deal with these macro-economic trends are essential, it is also necessary to…
By Amit Kapoor The drama revolving around the Karnataka state elections refuses to fade away. The assembly election results were not able to provide a clear mandate to any party. The BJP emerged as the…
By Janita Gurung & Pradyumna J.B. Rana This year marks a quarter century of the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – an agreement among 196 countries to conserve the earth’s biological diversity…
By Vikas Datta Across the Second World War’s hundreds of thousands of armed clashes, big and small, across multiple theatres, there are few soldiers, below general rank, who may have influenced its strategic course, and…
By Amulya Ganguli The hopes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) adding Karnataka to the list of 19 states where it is in power has been dashed although it came close to fulfilling it. However,…
By Amit Khanna It is well known that in spite of producing the largest number of films in the world the health of the industry is not very sound. With a success rate of a…
By Taponeel Mukherjee Public opinion on privatisation ranges from proponents who say it increases efficiency to opponents to fear it will lead to higher charges. As we evaluate potential policies regarding privatisation in India, it…
By Vivian Fernandes New Delhi, May 15 (IANS) The regulator for genetically modified (GM) crops in its meeting on March 21 declined to reinforce its decision in May 2017 recommending approval for commercial cultivation of…
By Amit Kapoor Just as the Indian economy was limping back to normalcy after an elongated period of subdued growth, oil prices have thrown a spanner in the works right on cue. Oil prices, which…
By Frank F. Islam Over 31 million people of Indian birth or descent are part of the Indian diaspora spread around the world. Of them, 3.1 million, or 10 per cent, are Indian-Americans living in…
By Dr. Jacques Trouvilliez World Migratory Bird Day this year breaks new ground with the campaign being a joint exercise between UN Environment’s Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) and the Convention…
By Vikas Datta An essential attribute of humanity, languages serve the purpose of communication, but given their sheer multiplicity and variations, they are more liable to create barriers to understanding, than paving the way towards…
By Amulya Ganguli Irrespective of the outcome of the Karnataka elections and notwithstanding Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s desire to retire after the polls, a feature of the contest in the southern state is his emergence as…
By Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) In its pursuit of global maritime dominance, China has decided to create a force of three aircraft-carriers — one for each of its fleets. Like India, China first acquired an…
By Vikas Datta Title: The Written World – How Literature Shaped History; Author: Martin Puchner; Publisher: Granta Books; Pages: 433; Price: Rs 699 In that splendid comedy “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines”, set…
By Taponeel Mukherjee Nate Silver, the American statistician and writer, once remarked: “The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.” In line with Silver’s thesis, global and domestic…
By Vikas Datta In physics, Richard P. Feynman is feted for his path-breaking contribution to quantum theory — especially its electrodynamics, which won him the Nobel Prize — and for being among the extraordinary scientific…
By Amit Kapoor In a situation that is all too familiar to Indians now, ATMs across the country began to run dry last month. Only this time there was no obvious explanation for this. With…
By Ashok Vajpeyi More than 25 years ago, the Indian government decided to put together a National Policy of Culture in keeping with more than a hundred countries that had such policies. In fact, there…