It’s easier said than done, as the Indian weddings are just getting bigger and fatter by the day. And mind you the brash celebration is not just restricted to the business honchos who invite international pop stars to perform at their weddin
Life is a gamble everywhere. But in India, different states have different laws on gambling, lotteries, casinos. And betting on games, perfectly legal in many countries, is not allowed anywhere in India. That a betting network flourishes undergrou
Other than climate and of course politics, cricket is the most popular topic of conversation among strangers. Bollywood too does not cover as much geography as the game inherited from the colonial masters does. Like Bollywood, cricket has an ugly
In a J.G. Ballard short story called *The Subliminal Man*, the expressways have rubber studs, spaced progressively apart in the lanes for 40, 50, 60, and 70 miles per hour. The tyre treads and the studs intermesh to produce a smooth hum only if th
Universal basic income (UBI) has been the buzz in policy circles since global downturn. Arvind Subramanian, former chief economic adviser to the finance ministry, championed the idea and devoted a full chapter to it in the Economic Survey of 2016-
It`s an idea rejected by the central government many times over - the latest in December 2018. India must remain united by a single time, the government reasoned, because coordination between zones for transport, railways, bank work, security agen
The fifth edition of the Global Nutrition Report was released in Bangkok, Thailand, on November 29, 2018 during the event titled ‘Accelerating the end of hunger and malnutrition’, which saw participation from key decision-makers, resea
What would be the one thing you would do if you are prime minister for the time it takes to throw a lemon up in the air and catch it? Mahatma Gandhi’s answer, the anecdote goes, was that he’d ban alcohol. The notion of the whole
Democracy is people’s own rule, but the billion-plus people of India cannot gather in one place to frame laws. So we elect representatives who, theoretically speaking, draft laws on our behalf. In practice, much can get lost in translation.
It happens in the US, UK and many other developed countries, then why not in India? The word ‘sarkari’ is scary enough for the Indian middle class, leave alone the elite. Even as the admission season approaches there are kilometre-long
It will kill two birds with one stone. Or rather three. It will not only reduce the number of pending cases with the apex court, which is 57,987 as of June 2018, but will also provide litigants from the southern, eastern and western parts of the c
Before Narendra Modi replied with the now-famous greeting of “Puducherry ko Vanakkam”, a BJP worker was telling him in a party-organised video conference that the government was “only busy collecting tax in all manner and in all
A few years ago, we could have suggested, why not do away with `1,000 notes. We could have also suggested that the planning commission is anyway founded on an executive fiat and can be done away with another since it does not serve any logical pur
At a time when Indian Railways claims that it has achieved many milestones in 2018, there are numerous areas where the national transporter needs to turn its focus and improve its services. The railways say that it not only unveile
Farmers have at last forced the nation to sit up and take notice of what they are enduring. They marched to Delhi to protest. Then the assembly elections happened, and the defeat of the ruling BJP in three of its bastions – Rajasthan, Madh
Should e-cigarettes, nicotine patches, other nicotine-replacement therapies, and heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products be encouraged? Are they less harmful than smoking and traditional ways of taking tobacco? The current tobacco debate, as
The Razor’s Edge, a 1944 novel by Somerset Maugham, explores the dichotomy between materialism and spirituality. The title is derived from a line of Katha Upanishad: “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise s
The recent conviction of former coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta and other officers by a CBI court in a case relation to allocation of a coal block in West Bengal has raised many questions relating to governance. The case arose from a CBI inves
The Steel Frame of the government machinery was forged by the Iron Man. The phrase that has come to describe the Indian bureaucracy was coined by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, when he addressed the first batch of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) pr
Naseeruddin Shah is not just a Bollywood star; he is a rarity – a thinking actor. His dialogues delivered with impeccable diction drive home the point without any element of melodrama. IN the same measured voice, he is often known for speaki
