Interview of Kumar Mangalam Birla
Few of us know that KUMAR MANGALAM BIRLA, Chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, produced the critically acclaimed Hindi movie Black. Or that he has…
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INDIAN WILDLIFE – CAN THE TIGER SAVE ITS STRIPES?
“Going in quest thereof, one of our Soldiers, a Youth, killed a Tiger-Royal; it was brought home by 30 or 40 Combies (Koonbee), the Body…
Garam hawa
India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘FOOD PRICES set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…
The Opposition-The Games Old Men Play
There is an old Indian parable that says it all: six blind men feel various parts of an elephant’s anatomy, and each one extrapolates, from…
The Art of Survival
Deep inside the jungle in northernmost Mizoram, a lone man brews a tin mug of tea in the early morning haze. He is squatting on…
Spate Of Senseless Tragedies
Qutab Minar, the 72.5-metre-high monolithic tower that Iltutmish built 750 years ago, witnessed two shocks in its hoary life-span. In 1368, it was struck by…
Taken For A Ride
No point of no return was so final as the one Charan Singh and Devi Lal reached on July 21. The crusty Jat leaders have…
GREAT STRESS TEST
Since you all love acronyms for the Good and Simple Tax and the Grand Stupid Thought, the headline is my humble contribution to your lexicon.…
ENOUGH ALREADY
I wish the government would stop trying to defend demonetisation. Every time there is bad economic news, the government jumps up to proclaim that demonetisation…
HOW TO MAKE MORE WITH LESS
How much a hurry is prime minister Narendera Modi in? It depends on your horizon. By one measure, he has 22 months, but then he…
CLEANING UP OUR ACT( India is trying to do its bit on climate change )
At the Hamburg group of 20 summit on 7-8 July, diplomats toiled through most of the night over US intransigence on climate change before they…
A FIRST-RATE PROBLEM
India’s economy is lurching like a car with two flat rear tyres. The monsoon has been better than expected: a bumper kharif crop is expected,…
CLOSE,, BUT NO CIGAR
Finance Ministers take on a certain air when they think things are going swimmingly and nothing can rock the economy when it is cruising along.…
KILLING ME SOFTLY
He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odour nor perfume—just strange,…
APOCALYPSE NOW
Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…
The Dog’s tail
There is no loophole that has not met an Indian taxpayer. A Hindi proverb says you can never straighten a dog’s tail (kutte ki poonch…).…
THE AIR IS THICK
The Good news is that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress seem to have finally woken up to the looming catastrophe of air pollution…