Columns

These last two weeks have been pretty confounding and humbling for me, both as a generic Indian and a stand-alone Shukla. It’s bad enough to be treated as an idiot by the government of the day, but it’s worse when you start suspecting that the government may be right after all. I no longer get […]

In his best-selling book, TEN LESSONS FOR A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD, Farid Zakaria makes an interesting point. He says that since the early 1990s, global inequality had been showing a marked decline, both between countries and between people in a particular country. This, he says, ” was caused in large part by sustained economic progress in China,

Only a fool, said G. K. Chesterton, knows life; for only a fool is taken in by life. Prudent people stand aloof, to keep their skin intact. Those who are “prudent” in the world’s eyes become, as Jesus said, like the wheat that ‘remains alone’. Safe, but sterile. Now, the question is: who decides who is a fool,

( Concluding part of the article ) THE WAY FORWARD The pandemic has provided us some important lessons for a sustainable world, the most important being that preservation of the natural environment is not just a matter of landscape aesthetics but an imperative for our own health and survival. This is also a warning for

 [ This is the first of a two- part article on this subject. ] Mr Vir Sanghvi has just sealed the fate of Mashobra, a once idyllic Shimla suburb where I live after my retirement. In an article last week he claimed that Mashobra was ” the new Maldives” of India. Now, Mr. Sanghvi must

(The text of the speech delivered in a multi-religious vigil for Fr. Stan Swamy) It is natural and necessary to feel for the tragic death of a noble soul. All the more so, when it is enveloped in injustice. But this should not make us forget that the decisive thing is life, not death. What

I am happy also for the present dispensation, for I am a patriot. Fr. Stan Swamy is no more. I feel awkward about mourning his death. Instead, I feel a strange sort of happiness. An eerie sort of relief. Who are we to mourn his death? We, who dare not utter a word, fearing for

There has been no bearded specimen in the Shukla family for the last hundred years at least, including my cousin Madho. He occasionally does present an untidy hirsute look  which could be mistaken for a fuzz, but a closer examination reveals that his facial fallicles do not conform to the dictionary definition of a beard

The Supreme Court has disappointed again. While not interfering with the bail granted to the three student activists- Natasha, Kalita and Asif- in the Delhi riots and ” conspiracy ” case, it has, vide its order of 18th June 2021, effectively stayed the Delhi High Court order on UAPA. To my mind, the court had