CATEGORIES

Missing In Action

The pandemic may not be the real reason why Parliament is not in session

Must Our Hearts Break?

The horrific privations of families of fallen heroes are, thankfully, a thing of the past. While affirming the Indian Army’s great tradition of selfless duty and sacrifice, this is an anguished appeal to the political leadership to not cheaply throw away men’s lives and to the public to tend always to their morale.

Mine Your Own Business

Modi government’s push for self-sufficiency in coal revives age-old debate over the cost of development

The Crude Truth

A glut in oil production has seen prices hitting rock bottom. And the global crude war is getting interesting.

BORDER TROUBLE IN VALLEY VIEW

Tension on the China front haunts Ladakh even as the Valley witnesses a familiar spate of encounter killings

Smoke The Tso

As the difficult goal of status quo ante in Ladakh is being pursued, fresh diplomatic and military solutions to deal with China are aired. And the politicians squabble, pointlessly.

The Political Jugglenaut

Behind the first Rath Yatra without pilgrims in Puri is a nail-biting tale enmeshed in a legal tangle that puts the Naveen Patnaik government in poor light

Neighbour's ENEMY

India’s paternalistic attitude towards neighbouring countries generated resentment and created space for China. New Delhi must now shore up inner confidence, make up for past brashness and regain their trust.

Private Limited

States’ cooperation vital for success of revamped mining policy

A Wise Gardener

India is far from being isolated in the neighbourhood. But to push China back will need a symphony of strategic tasks.

Blood On The Barbed Wire

Named after Ladakhi explorer Ghulam Rasool Galwan, the Galwan river flows west from Aksai Chin to converge with the Shyok in Ladakh. It slices through high-altitude mountains and the peaks overlook the valleys and pass—especially a stretch of India’s 255-km Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldi road running close to Galwan valley.

Snip A Forked Tongue

The equal cost imposed on China for its escalation at Galwan should caution it against a further violation of the June 6 agreement. With matching military strength in the area, both sides must ensure peace.

Bihar Poll Theme: Fifteen Vs Fifteen

As Nitish replays old vinyl titled ‘RJD jungle raj’, Lalu’s son says— CM doesn’t have anything to show other than the Yadav family

Hot And Sour Asia Policy

China’s strategy is to keep alliances from building amongst its regional rivals, using the carrot and stick routine.

NO ONE'S GODSON

Sushant Singh’s suicide puts the spotlight on nepotism and the price outsiders pay to fit in Bollywood.

‘Hong Kong's youth are desperate. They no longer care about their lives.'

June 12 marks the first anniversary of major clashes between pro-democracy protestors and the police in Hong Kong after its government introduced a controversial extradition bill. It was later withdrawn in face of mounting opposition, but protests continue unabated. Evans Chan has traced the evolution of the city’s resistance from the 2014 Umbrella Movement to the leaderless protests of 2019 in his engaging documentary We Have Boots. He talks to Syed Saad Ahmed about the film and the struggle against Chinese authoritarianism.

Lotus Wilts in Loktak

Former CM ibobi Sigh of Congress (left) and CM N. Biren Singh, who leads the BJp alliance

Every Home A Studio Rasa

Driven by passion, enabled by technology, this is how Chennai’s musicians are serving concert-starved rasikas

‘My body is in great shape, tennis muscle memory runs deep'

To measure the contribution of the inimitable, and irreplaceable, Leander Paes to Indian tennis, one just has to look at the success percentage of his 30-year Davis Cup career: an astounding 72.65 per cent (singles/doubles, on all surfaces). Also, the 1996 Olympic bronze medallist holds the Davis Cup world record of most wins: 45 (77.58 per cent) in 58 ties played. Still, the ageless Paes, who turned 47 on June 17, is not averse to continuing, postCovid shutdown. While cleaning his Mumbai apartment during the lockdown, he spoke to Qaiser Mohammad Ali in a free-wheeling interview. Excerpts:

Change or Perish

The immediate need for infrastructure and a credible military ecosystem is all very well. But the PLA’s ability to fight a transformational, algorithm war—non-kinetic and non-contact—is the danger in the future.

Vaccine Race— The Candidates

The starting gun was sounded as far back as the weekend of January 11-12, when Chinese authorities released the full sequence of the COVID-19 genome.

Who ‘Created' Covid?

Was the Moon landing fake? Do reptiles rule us? Is Elvis alive? When conspiracy theories start proliferating like mutant viruses…

Did The Lockdown Work?

This one executive decision was deemed at first to be a no-brainer.

WHERE IS THE DATA?

So we have a bio-earthquake with shifting epicentres in Covid-19, still rumbling unpredictably over our demographic plates.

WHAT ARE VIRUSES?

A glimpse into virosphere—that mysterious cusp between life and non-life—will tell us they are part of us, within us, and wrote us into being

WHO DECIDES COVID POLICY?

The pandemic has not been kind to Delhi. The state government, no stranger to pugilist moves in politics, is locked in a grim battle. Even since the lockdown was eased, horror stories have been escaping out of city hospitals like ghouls out to torment the populace. The city’s Covid graph is soaring; overloaded hospitals are turning away patients, letting them die without proper medical care. But what’s a crisis if not an opportunity for some extra lashings of mayhem?

WHAT IS THE PEAK?

Whe the air is vacuum-cleaned of real information, what fills it is the elements of empty anticipation. Rumour, speculation, fear…all these form a suspended particulate matter that we then breathe in. The latest talk doing the rounds was that India would duck back into hibernation—into a strict lockdown—by the middle of June or so. Since Indians are familiar with the phenomenon of a late-evening broadcast fundamentally altering their realities, appending a ‘could be’ or ‘maybe’ on that rumour is pointless. But the reason why the situation spawns such speculation is clear.

DOES INDIA (NOT) HAVE A MILDER EPIDEMIC?

This is a question that has mutated right in front of our eyes, almost as if to mock us.

PLASMA THERAPY SILVER BULLET OR NOT?

Leave, for a moment, those telescopic shots—those world maps filled with red dots, the Covid Tracker popups spinning and dancing on your screen.

OUR LIVE-IN VIRUS

Corona has settled over this landmass like a moving cryptic crossword. How do we read its clues?