Avay Shukla

To keep the synapses in my rapidly deteriorating brain functioning I always ask myself a trick question every week, and attempt to answer it the next week. The question for this week is: is it possible for somebody to be thick skinned and thin skinned at the same time ? If you’re the type who […]

Anyone who thinks that the anti-hijab campaign is about discipline and dress code needs to have his or her head examined. And anyone who thinks it’s about the emancipation of Muslim women needs to have a frontal lobotomy without any further loss of time. For it’s clear as crystal that this is just the latest

The present government at the centre is in no hurry to meet its grandly proclaimed targets. We have it on the authority of the Prime Minister himself that Acche Din have been deferred by 25 years. This year’s union budget is a ” hundred years” budget, presumably because it makes little sense for 2022. Minister

[ In medieval England a warm water bath in a tub was a luxury. So whole families would indulge in a community bath a couple of times in a month., all dipping into the same precious hot water. The kids came last, obviously, and by their turn the water in the tub was dark with

I have for some time been convinced that Moses (of Old Testament fame ) was THE original bureaucrat. The anecdotal evidence is pretty convincing. He offered to his peoples the Promised Land, and then made them wander around in the desert for forty years. If this is not the classic bureaucratic run-around then what is

If you’re wondering how deep the rot has set into our society, and how autonomous the radicalisation of even the educated sections has become, you have to look no further than the open letter written by 32 assorted retired IFS officers on the 5th of this month in response to an appeal by more than

I am gradually getting convinced of two things: one, all this ozone rattling by various COPs is getting us nowhere; and two, that economists do not live on the same planet that you and I do. This was brought home to me conclusively last Sunday night when I was listening to Ruchir Sharma being interviewed

Something curious seems to be happening in my home state, Ulta Pradesh or Attar Pradesh, depending on whether you are standing on your head or breathing deeply in Kannauj. The curious part does not refer to the Yogic Yogi doing the 100 meter sprint behind the Prime Minister’s bullet proof car on some expressway or

INDIA’S LONG WALK HOME Edited by Ishan Chauhan & Zenaida Cubbinz Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. 2021. Rs. 595.00 About once in every generation, an event occurs which is so tectonic in its scope and intensity that it cries out to be chronicled for posterity. Not merely recorded or reported by news media and television