Columns

The writing has been on the wall for quite some time, for all to see except perhaps the acolytes of the NDA government. India’s falling governance parameters over the last decade ( Press Freedom, Rule of Law, Inequality, Human Rights, Religious Freedom, Environmental Performance, Academic Freedom) all indicate a gradual structural collapse of the institutions […]

Now that we have an idea of what Mr. Modi looks like at the stroke of the midnight hour, and have also learnt how to install a teleprompter on a mobile phone, let us move on to some other aspects of the Jantar Mantar protests not yet reported upon. Nothing better exhibits, or symbolises, the

It’s not working. These days everybody and his grandfather wants to live to be a hundred, even if it’s in a hospital ICU. And if we continue to make babies at the current rate and impose an 18% GST on condoms (28% for flavoured condoms as they come under the category of fruits), by 2050

Any game, or contract, is based on and pre-supposes mutually accepted rules which govern, and bind, the participants. Democracy is one such contract, the ultimate social contract, in which the citizens (the ruled) give up their individual powers to the elected government (the ruler) in return for the protection of their rights, freedoms and the

Kuhu Joshi is the author of My Body Didn’t Come Before Me (Speaking Tiger, 2023). Her work has been published in Poetry, Best New Poets, Four Way Review, Rattle, South Carolina Review, and other publications. She earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was a Jane Cooper Poetry Fellow and studied under the

I am a happy man these days, or at least as happy as anyone can be in this Ram rajya where even 1600 CTVs and 400 security guards could not prevent His abode from being looted by His own bhakts. To be clear, however: I am not happy because Mr. Pradhan has resigned as Education

T.S. Eliot had dubbed April as “the cruelest month” in one of his poems; I am sure he had his reasons for doing so, but it does reveal that he was not one of the 40 million odd Indian taxpayers. For, had he been one, he would have vehemently disagreed- in India, the cruelest month

It has been my experience that every District Collectorate is usually haunted by its own resident lunatic, somewhat like ancient mansions possessing their resident spectres who do not look kindly on new arrivals. These benignly deranged persons are usually quite harmless, and in them the spirit of violence is replaced by the litigatious and bureaucratic

Biodiversity is perhaps the most unacknowledged component of the natural environment, and the attention of policy makers rarely goes beyond trees and animals, if even that. But biodiversity is much more than just trees and animals. It is the building block of nature, without which there would be no nature, or an inhabitable planet. Biodiversity