Youthful idealism represents the conscience of the future. The famous photograph of a high school student offering a chrysanthemum to American soldiers while protesting the US occupation of Vietnam defined hopes stand against injustice. In just half a century, the protestors profile has changed from gentle symbolic defiance to rabid anti-Semitism. Worse, the heads of college unions, mostly of Muslim lineage or liberal hatemongers, are supporting pro-Palestinian mobs that have taken over campuses

Sunday marks 801 days since Vladimir Putin ordered Russias invasion of Ukraine. The war has unleashed catastrophic destruction , displaced millions, resulted in forced conscription and ukhyliant or draft dodgers, claimed lives and cost billions. Prospects of a peace deal in the fall of 2022 were dashed and Hail Mary offensives have flailed. It is a war where defeat and victory defy definition. It is true the war refurbished unity among the West and NATO. It is equally true that the effort of the

The Earth is the library of mankind. For centuries, an obsessive, inquisitive and courageous tribe has been trying to excavate the extensive hoard of knowledge hidden beneath its layers of soil and sand, oceans, forests, rivers and ruinsa tribe called archaeologists. Their purpose is to exhume the debris of millennia, to understand the evolution of man, the rise and fall of civilisations and empires and, in the process, find a common thread between the past and present, and explain why we are as

As a golden cricketing generation comes to an end, some of Indias A-list batters know their time is running out to win the most elusive of ICC crowns. The India team, who command most of the commerce international cricket has to offer, have gone 11 years without a title. Having picked up three in six years from 2007 to 2013, this drought surely represents a low watermark for a team who have otherwise aced all challengers. So the upcoming T20 World Cup in the US and West Indies is perhaps the las

The Delhi High Courts recent order allowing the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to process the applications filed by several lessors for deregistration of 54 planes is a body blow to the resolution process of Go First. The airline had 59 aircraft when it stopped operations in early May last year. With virtually all but five aircraft gone, there would be very little assets left with the airline. The court verdict, therefore, makes it difficult for any prospective resolution applicant to see

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had the best of relations with Western leaders in his twin terms so far. Not so with the Western media, who have an assortment of descriptors for him ranging from strongman to autocrat. His government's response to the carefully orchestrated verbal assault has been a disdainful scorn for traditional media, masked in a new aura of confidence in national supremacy and a refusal to be the Western media's favourite whipping boy. This was demonstrated yet again when R

With Tamil Nadu voting for all its Lok Sabha seats on April 19, the curtains have come down on the short campaign in the state. The four-cornered race was dominated by the three major fronts: the DMK-led INDIA bloc, the AIADMK alliance and the BJP front. While the fourth party, the NTK, has its own following, its candidates are not expected to win any seats. The DMK front was expected to benefit from a split in opposition votes after the AIADMK parted ways with the BJP late last year. The BJP we

There is understandable heat over the recent bans by Hong Kong and Singapore on a slew of spices and condiments exported from India. The Hong Kong food regulator, on a random inspection, discovered high levels of a cancer-causing pesticide in several mixes of well-known brands MDH and Everest. It told distributors to recall those products and stop further imports. Subsequently, the Singapore Food Agency directed a local distributor to recall Everests fish curry masala. Following these embarrassi

If the Asian Olympic Games qualifier for wrestling is anything to go by, the mens teams failure to secure even a single place in Paris can be termed abysmal. The freestyle wrestlers, who were expected to win at least one or two places, could not even enter the semis barring Aman Sehrawat in the 57 kg category. To add to the woes, two wrestlersDeepak Punia (86 kg) and Sujeet Kalkal (65 kg)could not participate because of the unprecedented floods in Dubai, where they were stuck at the airport for

Direct tax revenues rose by an impressive 18 percent in 2023-24. A similar trend has been seen in goods and services tax, whose total collections crossed Rs 20 lakh crore for the first time, posting a 12 percent growth over the previous year. The strong direct tax and GST collections show the government has been able to plug many loopholes in the system that allowed evasion or underpayment. The government should now devise plans to widen the tax net and bring more people under it. The number of

In the late 1940s, Sardar Patel, Indias first Deputy Prime Minister in Jawaharlal Nehrus Cabinet, embarked on the strenuous task of uniting India. The country was then a patchwork quilt of British India and the monarchs who ran their own show. While the 17 British Indian provinces accepted without a murmur, the 560 Princely States that made up around two-fifths of Indias land mass refused to accede. One of the fiercest opponents of United India was Sir CP Ramaswami Iyer, the aristocratic Dewan o

This Monday, the world will observe Earth Day for the 55 th time. In 1971, the then UN Secretary General U Thant unveiled the idea, observing, An earth day has suddenly become necessary to remind us of the fact that our small planet is perishable. In the five decades since, a number of calendar eventsabout a spectrum of concernshave been unveiled. At last count, there were over 20 listed environment days underlining the need to preserve the planets equilibrium. The planet is no less a precariou

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure . - Mark Twain Twain should know. He was a professional gambler on a Mississippi steamboat he captained, and tried to invent a children's game which he was confident would make him rich. The 139-year-old Congress is still a childrens gameof two siblings who claimed their superiority with the supreme confidence that only true ignorance can sustain. This genetic flaw in the partys political DNA has caused a mutation i

Sometimes, small gestures can reflect a mans personality. On Sunday, when the Mumbai Indians looked vanquished, one person stood unperturbed and tall in the middleRohit Sharma. He had just completed a century, but looked dejectedhis team still needed 29 runs off three balls against an accurate and wily Chennai Super Kings attack. When the match was over, Rohit did not celebrate his 105 off 63 balls. He walked alone past the customary handshakes to the dressing room. For him, as for many other pl

Despite the BJPs confidence in coming back to power with an even bigger mandate, the INDIA bloc is not letting the ruling coalition have a stroll to that goal. The opposition parties have made joblessness a big electoral issue, which the ruling party is not able to easily ward off. The Congress manifesto offered a detailed plan to improve the employment situation in the country. In comparison, the BJP, which released its manifesto this Sunday, has put out fewer specifics on job creation. While t

Decoding the polemic of conscience is fraught with pathos and pitfalls. Human rights, once the scourge of autocrats, is being haunted by the clichd question: is one mans terrorist another mans freedom fighter? Last week, Amnesty International condemned Israel for the death of Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian terrorist who kidnapped, tortured and mutilated Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam, by gouging our his eyes and castrating him. Amnesty, the global torchbearer of human rights is banned in India for mone

It is not often that an epigrammatic expression from a spiritual text migrates to the material world to emerge as a popular idiom. The Gospel of Matthew (25:29) states, For to everyone who has, more shall be given. The text underlines the spiritual quest to value divine blessings. In 1829, the poet P B Shelley found political context and used it to frame the construct of the rich get richer. A century later, American sociologist Robert K Merton deployed the sentiments to coin the Matthew Effect

Politics is woven with extremes, a pastiche of memory and forgetfulness. In December 1988, winter was sweeping through North India. Warmed by Tamil Nadus tropical weather, Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister and Congress chief, was stumping for G K Moopanar, the partys chief ministerial candidatethe assembly elections were on. Rajiv entered a small, ramshackle hut in a remote hamlet. Moopanar asked the old woman living there whether she recognised Rajiv. Promptly came the response: Yes, he is Indira am

Like the US presidential elections, the Indian parliamentary polls too attract the worlds attention. For two reasons. Indias emergence on the global stage and Prime Minister Narendra Modis rise as a global leader. Both are intertwined. Modis rise was more than a miracle. For over a decade, he was relentlessly demonised within and the world over as some mini-Hitler. From being an intensely hated person, he has become the most admired world leader in just 10 years. The world viewed with awe how he

Humanity feeds off metaphors. Metaphors are the explanatory markers in the development of language. The prevailing political metaphor is the not-so-humble sponge. It soaks up the primeval muck of power politics and regurgitates the phonetic nuances of Indian rajneeti. Coincidentally, the oldest animal on earth is the sponge, a multi-cellular life-form that sucks in oxygen to survive. Like current political ideologies, sponges had no organs, muscles or nervous system. Their only talent was to fil

The conscience industry is one of the pillars of India's crumbling Left liberal edifice. There is nothing like a good cry to get the tears and dollars flowing for poverty propagandists. The elite NGOs who haunted the corridors of powerwooing munificent ministers and beneficial babus with the best vol-au-vent and five-star grub for unsuspecting whites with deep pockets and a cultural guilt about being rich while Acche Din is on the agendaare quivering under their muslin dohars in Lutyens Delhi ma

You could call it a short-lived episode of schadenfreude . Last week P Rajeeve, Keralas minister for industries and law, wooed IT companies in Bengaluru, which is reeling under water shortage, to shift to Kerala. He pointed out that Kerala has 44 rivers, big and small and that water is no issue at all. Predictably, the serenade grabbed headlines. The audacity fizzled out soon enough as realitythe gap between the demand and supply of water in Keralacame knocking and surfaced in news reports. In f

Karnataka is racing ahead in the electric vehicles sector, clocking sales of 1.6 lakh vehicles in 2023-24 and coming in at the third place after the much more populous Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. EV registrations in Karnataka have grown a whopping 1,275 percent over the last three years: the state now has 3.4 lakh two-, three- and four-wheeler EVs, compared to only 9,703 registered in 2020. In this, Karnataka has been keeping up with a southern trendthe state along with Kerala and Tamil Nadu

Manmohan Singh, Indias 13th prime minister, who had the third longest tenure in the office after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, has retired from the Rajya Sabha after a long, distinguished and sometimes controversial political innings. Lavish praise was heaped on the 91-year-old former premier from both sides of the aisle. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted, Very few people have accomplished as much as you for the nation and its people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted that his

In ancient times, there were no psychologists, only philosophers. The Greek philosopher Epictetus was actually a social psychologist who founded a school of philosophy in 68 AD. He writes, it is mens opinion of themselves, not the events themselves, that cause their emotions. The current events causing political anxiety are the elections. In modern psychology, Epictetus could be describing the free floating anxiety phenomenon. Possibly it is free floating anxiety that makes Narendra Modi an indo

The markets are calling it the everything rally. US benchmark index S&P500 is hovering near its all-time high. The Nasdaq Composite and the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached new all-time highs mid-week. In India, the Nifty50 is yo-yoing around its high watermark of 22,526. Theory has it that there is a correlation between the prices of gold (and bitcoin) and stocks, and that seem to be unravelling. Gold prices touched a new high of $2,222.49 an ounce this month. Bitcoin, that enigmatic articl

The classical Greeks were obsessed with identity. They called themselves civilised and others barbarians. Identity is the monochrome membership that shapes society. India has Aryans and Dravidians. America has natives and settlers. The othering that secular intelligentsia frets about after Narendra Modi came to power, and the Sanghs attempts to decolonise and de-culturise all non-Hindu influences irrespective of merit, is a social identity movement powered by politics. The Citizenship (Amendment

The bugles have been sounded and the drumbeats of campaign rhetoric are set to echo across Indias festival of democracy. Election campaigns are essentially partisan interpretations of maladies and manifestos proffer pious promises. The issues which deserve debate and a contest of competitive ideas are often waylaid by emotive issues. On the face of it, India is at the cusp of emerging from a developing economy to a developed economy. It is the fifth largest and the fastest growing economy headed

If there is war in peace time, it is during elections. Once, rulers relied on planetary configurations to choose the time of attack as advised by court astrologers. Ironically, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Electoral pundits like tycoons, market mavens, ideologically-infected intellectuals and polluted posters play number games to whet the appetite of their target audiences at cocktail parties or on TV. As the countdown to the 2024 Lok Sabha election begins, predicting the

History tells us that outcomes of epic battles are defined and determined by scale and momentum. The 2024 election is a contest between the BJP led by the omnipresent Narendra Modi, and a fragmented, oftentimes politically dysfunctional opposition. There is no ruling out surprises or the possibility of miracles in democracies. There is the David vs Goliath situation where the underdog, armed with slings and stones, overcome a stronger opponent. The Congress party will need more than a miracle to

Chaps who run big enterprises like empires, mega corporations and religions truly believe in their own greatness. The misquoted declaration of the French king, Louis IV, Aprs moi, le dlugetranslated as After me, the floodto his friend and mistress Madame de Pompadour, was interpreted by British lexicographer Ebenezer Cobham Brewer as Go to be ruined, if you like, when we are dead and gone. Myths of divine floods destroying civilisation exist in many cultures, such as the Hindu manvantara-sandhya

An old maxim states that people, in general, are quick to believe that which they wish to be true. The truismattributed to Julius Caesarplays out in Indias public discourse rather predictably every few months. The episodes of ricocheting rhetoric with surround sound effects follow the release of data on the state of the economy. Typically, in the intensely polarised political amphitheatre, every episode finds the believers singing the rah-rahraagand the sceptical atheists argue in disbelief. The

If Prime Minister Narendra Modi is Mufasa, the Lion King, the state chief ministers are his loyal Simbas. As he embarks on his eight-week-long Vote Yatra of his kingdom, the BJP is expecting the state chief ministers to extend his aura. As the chief ministers are the second engine for the BJP in each state, the hauling capacity of each one of them will decide the final numbers. Of the 12 BJP chief ministers, the six from Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Assam wil