Smart car on a smart date
By Ranjit Lal ‘So how do you like it?’ i asked my date as we stood in the driveway where my brand new pride and joy was parked. She gasped. ‘But…but it’s just so cute!’...
View ArticleTidy up Delhi’s AIIMS before building many more across India
By Dipankar Gupta Given our dismal health profile, it is indeed a great idea to clone Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and have at least four more in the country. This is...
View ArticleUnless you’re Kareena, we can tolerate just so many selfies of you
By Aditya Gupta When I was a kid things were so much simpler. I would dutifully stand where I was told to, fix my innocent gaze at a distant cloud, give my hair a quick...
View ArticleBreasts, balls and goals: How women have become second-class citizens in the...
By Sagarika Ghose In Brazil, land of the Body Beautiful, the female body in varying shades of nudity became the visual accessory of the Fifa World Cup. On the day of Brazil’s defeat, shots of...
View ArticleHow to avert another MH17
By Brahma Chellaney Despite international outrage over its downing, flight MH17 is not the first civilian airliner reportedly shot down by a rebel-fired anti-aircraft missile. Nor will it be the last,...
View ArticleIB reports against NGOs are more sinister in intent than in content
By Mahesh Bhatt The days of democracy are doomed, dead and buried if it doesn’t offer space for dissent and an alternative perspective. Howard Zinn, one of the best-known historians on people`s...
View ArticleIndia’s best hope is that the Budget due February 2015 chooses growth and jobs
By Arvind Panagariya The presidential address to Parliament on June 9, 2014 had focussed nearly exclusively on projects and schemes, eschewing policy. Therefore, many had eagerly awaited the budget...
View ArticlePotty training
Bikram Vohra What is about people that makes them believe their children are of fascinating interest to others. Went for a dinner the other night and i am sitting next to this very pleasant stranger...
View ArticleUPSC and CSAT are not for castaways, civil services must pick the best
Srivatsa Krishna Precious time of the nation and its leadership is being wasted on a non-issue, namely Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)’s new Civil Service Aptitude Test (CSAT). We must be the...
View ArticleGujarat plus much more
CM can do magic by fixing project implementation, but PM must fix policy first By Rajiv Kumar With the Modi government barely 60 days old, it is surely too early to make any assessments. But his...
View ArticleThe children of Syria tell the most compelling stories about the shattering...
By Lyse Doucet First it was Randa, a Syrian girl with two long braids tied with ribbons trailing down her back. At thirteen she had no doubt about what she wanted to be when she...
View ArticleMind your language
Gabbar, Mogambo and Dr Dang managed quite well without the crutch of gaalis By Madhumita Gupta ‘Nautanki sala’ said Jai and went back to his snooze. ‘Basanti in kutton ke aage mat nachna’ yelled Veeru....
View ArticleIt’s cruel to distort patients’ right to refuse treatment as an attempt to...
By R K Mani “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.” — Nelson Mandela The so-called euthanasia debate has focused on the banal and the semantic, while missing the...
View ArticleBook launched: How to sell a rambling story of a confused young man from an...
By Sheila Kumar My mother’s neighbour’s son wrote a book. He found a publisher and now it was time for the launch. I was asked if i would please ‘do the needful’. My mother being...
View ArticleEnd education’s licence raj
By Rahul Bajaj and Sanjay Bhargava The education system in our country is largely dysfunctional, from schools to universities. And this dysfunctionality is because of the system, not despite it. Our...
View ArticleFast-track courts do work
By Baijayant Jay Panda The Supreme Court’s rejection of a proposal to fast-track criminal cases against MPs — albeit while asking for an alternative plan to speed up the entire criminal justice system...
View ArticleOnly the culturally rooted can effectively answer people like Dinanath Batra
By Pavan K Varma An 85 year old man, who for 30 years was an anonymous teacher of Hindi and English in small towns of Punjab and Haryana, has become an influential, controversial and threatening...
View ArticleGive your heart away: India learnt to donate blood, it must do the same with...
By Samiran Nundy and Rema Nagarajan Thirty-five years ago many patients used to buy blood because of a shortage of voluntary donors. Today, nearly all the blood used across India is received as...
View ArticlePM’s brand equity is good news for those who want to be read. Isn’t it?
By Indrajit Hazra Well, of course, the Prime Minister has a beard. And his having a beard is not only fine but well within what the Constitution allows the heads of our governments to adorn. And...
View ArticleUP has five CMs today — Akhilesh is only the fifth: Kalyan Singh
Veteran politician Kalyan Singh has been chief minister of Uttar Pradesh over three terms, including during the controversial destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992. Having exited BJP and campaigned...
View Article
