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Kani Kusruti in All We Imagine As Light.

COUNTER CULTURE

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light creates a new cinematic language

Crafting a visual vocabulary that lies between gentleness and brutality, the film demands a new form of criticism that can match its poetic intricacy.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Activists participate in a demonstration for climate finance at the COP29 U.N. climate summit in November 2024.

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES

COP29: The $300 billion climate finance deal is an optical illusion

Rich nations’ measly offer amounts to a 1.2 per cent real increase over previous commitments. In effect, it’s a walkout from global climate efforts.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

SUM AND SUBSTANCE

SEBI’s great surrender

While international regulators and governments take action against Adani Group’s alleged misconduct, India’s own regulator looks the other way.

Mitali Mukherjee

EUROPESIDE | NOTES FROM A SMALL CONTINENT

Europe, NATO, and Ukraine: Hurtling towards catastrophe

In lockstep with the Joe Biden administration in the US, European leaders are playing a reckless game of brinkmanship.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) supporters hold a rally against the Adani Group, protesting the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, in Mumbai.

FROM THE SIDELINES

Politics has become a tool for the wealthy to protect their interests

Democracy now serves big money rather than common people’s needs.

Counter Culture

We need a new language to speak of new despairs

No Other Land shows how balanced reporting and neutrality become a blindfold when documenting lives where protest is constant and loss inevitable.

Prathyush Parasuraman

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES

COP29: How rich nations ducked their climate finance duties

The Baku summit promised trillions for climate action but delivered hollow rhetoric.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

More stories from Columns

D.Y. Chandrachud at the 21st Biennial State Level Conference of Judicial Officers in Bengaluru, on March 23. Some Maharashtrian lawyers nicknamed Chandrachud as “Godbole” (sweet talker).

D.Y. Chandrachud: A Sachin who could have been a Phogat

He showed technical proficiency and early promise but proved complicit rather than confrontational when the times required bloody-mindedness.

The Shiv Sena Bhavan in Mumbai stands deserted during vote counting for the Maharashtra Assembly election on November 23.

Maharashtra’s new reality: Beyond the revolving door

In the battle between “personality politics” and hyperlocal solutions, Mahayuti’s cash-in-hand welfare strategy has won the Maximum State.

Mitali Mukherjee

In hoardings, reels, ads selling vacations, financial instruments, even medical services, we have become visibly grey-glam.

Now you see us, now you don’t

It is not just the male gaze that you are rid of with your new-found invisibility at 50. It is the freedom from other people’s expectations.

A bulldozer demolishes an ‘illegal construction’ in Jaipur. October 20, 2024.

Supreme Court lifts the veil on demolition as extra-judicial punishment

In a people-centric judgment, the court demolishes “coincidence theory” as hollow, mandates due process to protect citizens’ right to shelter.

A vegetable-seller in Bengaluru flaunts a cart full of tomatoes.

Tomato: The berry with a wolf

Both the tomato and the tomato sauce are about violence

Ajay Devgn as DCP Bajirao Singham in Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again.

Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again is an epic cop-out

The movie, a forceful, joyless retracing of the Ramayana does a disservice to the very thing it purports to be in service of: the police force.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in West Singhbhum before the Jharkhand Assembly election, on November 4.

BJP is back to its favourite bogey: ‘The Other’

The measured campaign in Haryana was an aberration. In Jharkhand, the BJP has reverted to its radical right-wing playbook.

The majority’s 7:2 verdict explicitly criticises the “Marxist reading” of the Constitution, arguing that the framers intended flexibility in economic policy rather than state control of private resources.

Supreme Court’s historic ruling redefines private property rights, favours market economy over state control

Nine-judge bench overturns “socialist-era” interpretation of Article 39(b), limiting state’s control over private property.

Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud addresses the National Annual Stakeholders Consultation in New Delhi, September 28, 2024.

Justice Chandrachud’s tenure ends with critical questions about judicial independence and conduct

The 50th CJI came promising judicial reform but exits leaving a legacy of compromised independence and diminished institutional credibility.

After the demonetisation debacle of 2016, currency in circulation dropped to Rs.13.35 trillion the year after. Photo for representation.

For India’s rupee now, comparisons are better done from the bottom than the top

Once measured against strong currencies, India’s falling rupee finds new peers in struggling economies like Turkey and Iran.

Mitali Mukherjee

The Open Hand Monument in Capitol Complex, Chandigarh.

Empty hands: Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh between symbol and reality

Today, its modernist symbols—from the towering Open Hand Monument to the unused Pit of Contemplation—float like ghostly ideals.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool have never been enthusiastic about a caste census.

West Bengal’s ‘casteless’ myth

Three privileged castes control politics, culture, and education in the State, where 45 per cent of the reservation belongs to SC/ST and OBCs.

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